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SUPREME THINGS, 



IN 



THEIR PRACTICAL RELATIONS. 



/: 



y^ BY 



REV. E. F. BURR, D. D., LL. D., 

lUTHOR of " ECCE CCELUM," " AD FIDEM/' "CELESTIAL EMPIRES," 

ETC. 



Ad uKovecv ret tov Oeov^ 




W^9 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 









COPYRIGHT, 1889, 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



GON^EINI?©. 



I. THE SUPREME BOOK 7 

II. THE SUPREME CREED _ - 25 

III. THE SUPREME SOCIETIES - 43 

IV. THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT 61 

V. THE SUPREME INSTITUTION 'j'j 

VI. THE SUPREME EVIL 97 

VII. THE SUPREME GOOD 129 

VIII. THE SUPREME APPETITE 147 

IX. THE SUPREME FREEDOM 167 

X. THE SUPREME CLIMAX 193 

XL THE SUPREME REMEDY 207 

XII. THE SUPREME DECISION 223 

XIIL THE SUPREME PACIFICATION 239 

XIV. THE SUPREME CAREER 253 

XV. THE SUPREME VALLEY ..- 273 



4 CONTENTS. 

XVI. THE SURPREME FUTURE - 293 

XVII. THE SUPREME COUNTRY 309 

XVIII. THE SUPREME CORONATION 329 I 

XIX. THE SUPREME PERSON (i) 353 

XX. THE SUPREME PERSON (2)-— 371 

XXI. THE SUPREME PERSON (3) 387 



PREFACE. 



What are supreme tilings and what their 
[practical relations? 

In answering this question, the following chap- 
ters found themselves wholly on the Scriptures. 
[This would be a very poor foundation if the 
Icriptures were largely a patchwork of Semitic 
Fables, not very cunningly devised by unknown 
luthors at comparatively recent dates, clumsily 
ind unscrupulously edited; pretending to a pre- 
posterous antiquity, to supernaturalisms that 
never occurred, to a divine origin and authority 
which they never had. But, happily for us, the 
Bible is not such a book. Christ, his church in 
every age, and the infinite needs of men, give a 
much better account of it. It is the Word of 
God. It is the holy Scriptures, which are able 
to make us wise to salvation. It is what holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost — so spake that one jot or tittle of 
their speaking shall in no wise pass away as long 
as the earth and heavens shall stand — so spake 
that Paul could believe all things written in the 
law and in the prophets. So the Bible is trust* 



6 PREFACE. 

worthy in every particular. Its facts are real 
facts, its doctrines are true doctrines, its methods 
and proportions and adjustments of truth are the 
best that infinite wisdom could furnish. Call it 
infallible. Say that it is final authority on all 
matters of which it speaks. Say that whatever 
it asserts, whether on this topic or that, whether 
in New Testament or Old, is surely true and di- 
vinely wise. You have a right to say it-all the 
Christian ages and instincts being witnesses. 

Such a Supreme Book as this is a very toler- 
able foundation for belief and practice. It is 
quite safe to build on the foundation of the apos- 
ties and prophets with Jesus Christ for the chief j 
corner-stone. Where shall one find a safer? Be- 
neath our much be-praised natural sciences ? By 
no means— for they rest for their ultimate facts 
on fallible human testimony instead of the in- 
fallible divine. Beneath the exact sciences, so 
called ? By no means— for they rest finally on j 
the seeming intuitions of fallible men instead of ' 
the real intuitions of the infallible God. 
Lyme, Conn. 



Tte Supreme Book, 



THE BIBLE. 



SUPREME THINGS 



/. THE SUPREME BOOK. 

The canon of Scripture has closed. The in- 
dications of divine revelation and providence are 
that never a word more of written revelation 
shall the world have. No more sacred histories, 
no more inspired poems, no more divine prophe- 
cies, no more infallible epistles. However much 
our curiosity, or, as it may seem to us, our piety, 
may crave additional information or precept or 
appeal from God, all plainly committed to writing 
in words that the Holy Ghost teaches, we shall 
not be gratified. The Scripture is finished. The 
topmost stone of the whole great palace has been 
laid; the last blow on it has been struck, and 
died away in echoes among its vaulted and costly 
halls; it has been solemnly dedicated to God's 
glory and man's salvation; and now nothing more 
will be done to it save to preserve it and shine 
upon it and manifest it— no additions, no contrac- 
tions, no repairs. Let it stand as it is as long as 
the world shall stand. 



8 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

It is now almost nineteen hundred years since 
the close of the canon. It had gradually been 
forming since the date of Moses; book after book 
had appeared, sometimes with centuries of inter- 
val; and now, at last, the last page was turned 
and the last sentence written out. It was at Pat- 
ttios, by the apostle John, some sixty years after 
the ascension of our I.ord. A very old book is 
this same Scripture canon-even the newest part 
of It. There is no empire in existence that dates 
back nearly as far. The book was done before 
the English language was begun. America was 
an unknown waste, Britain a land of sava-es 
in those distant days. Moons and suns hive 
marched through many a heavenly cycle; seats 
ot empire and civilization have wonderfully 
shifted; customs, literatures, dynasties, states, have 
risen and declined and passed away since then. 
How was It possible to end the canon-to wisely i 
end it-at so early a period ? How could God 
say to the world all that the world would ever 
need to have him say to it, in written language, so 
many thousands of years in advance of many pe- 
culiar conditions and peoples? The explanation 
lies in the fact that the Bible is a book of general 
principles sufficiently illustrated by particular 
facts. ^ Men can take these general principles 
and, with help of care and conscience and prayer 



the: suprkmk book. 



make the application for themselves to all the 
particular conditions that may arise. It is better 
for them to be put under the responsibility and 
discipline of doing this than it would to have it 
done for them direct out of heaven. 

The canon was closed, appropriately closed, 
tinder the last dispensation, by the last of the 
apostles, amid the last days of his life, with a gen- 
eral prophetic survey of the history of the church 
down to the world's last moment. With the 
! trump of the resurrection and judgment still 
pealing in his ear, with the glories of the new 
j heavens and the new earth still beaming on his 
' vision, John of the hoary locks traced the last 
letter on his parchment; and then faded from his 
features the awful and mysterious fires of inspira- 
tion, never to be rekindled in living man. 

The canon that thus came to a close is the 
noblest, completest, and most useful book that 
ever passed through human hands. Of all wise 
men, regarded as writing men, the sacred writers 
of the Old and New Testaments are the wisest. 
Solon, Plato, Seneca, and all their successors, in 
whatever line of thought, have not failed to write 
on their various themes with large mixture of 
error and insuflBciency. Their warmest admirers 
do not venture to claim for them more than a 
very qualified, fallible, and halting wisdom. But 



lO THE SUPREME THINGS. 

we claim for those holy men of God, who spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost, a wisdom 
absolutely perfect in all the communications they 
have made to the world on the subject of religion. 
They never said a word too much nor a word too 
little. They always said the right thing in the 
right place. They never said what was not true, 
nor what, being true, was of no consequence. 
They told mankind all that it was best for them 
to learn in that way, and told it to them in the 
best manner. The writings by which apostles 
and prophets, though dead, now speak to us, are 
the most marvellous specimens of adaptation to 
human needs that ever grew under human pens — 
being absolutely faultless in this regard. For 
God himself guided his messengers; and all their 
thoughts, and all their words even, were his 
thoughts and words, shaping themselves into an 
infallible rule of religious faith and practice. 

When I think of the dignity and variety of 
the truth which the Bible contains; when I think 
how much of all that the world possesses of good 
and fair is traceable directly to the Bible; when I 
think what the race would have been in the odi- 
ousness and misery of its reprobation without the 
restraining and elevating and converting gos- 
pel — I say to myself, Where shall I find even a 
divine work to which man is so much indebted, 



THE SUPREME BOOK, II 

or by which God is so much glorified ? Of all the 
means to holiness, short of God himself, the sa- 
cred canon is the chief The jewelled firmament, 
all aglow with suns and planets, says that God is 
great, and bids us fear and serve him; but not so 
clearly and strongly and successfully as does the 
Bible. Millions have been converted by the 
Book where one has been converted by nature — if, 
indeed, there ever was a conversion by mere na- 
ture. To right minds the white and black pages 
of the volume have always outshone the blue and 
gold pages of the sky. When has science lifted 
and consoled men like the story of Jesus ? When 
have the stars sung in the souls of men like the 
Christian promises? Miracles! There are mira- 
cles everywhere, on land and sea, below and 
above, before us and behind us; but where mira- 
cles so convincing and transforming as those re- 
corded of Christ and his apostles ? Precepts ! 
There are precepts everywhere, statutes and com- 
mon law, in the family, in society, in the state; 
but w^here precepts so pure, so elevated, so com- 
prehensive, so salutary, so vital, as w^e find in 
Holy Scripture ? In short, this divine Book 
stands at the head of all literature. 

The antiquary busies himself in dragging out 
from their hiding-places the ancient books, parch- 
ments, inscriptions, of the world. If he can find 



12 THE SUPRKMK THINGS. 

something venerable with the age of two or three 
centuries, or which dates back to the Conquest, or 
to those remoter times when Pompeii and Hercu- 
laneum passed under the surface, he exults over 
his antique treasures and prizes them more than 
gold. If from the dim storeroom of some decayed 
feudal mansion, or from the neglected and dusty 
nooks of some cloister, or from unearthed cities 
on the Euphrates and Nile, he can gather old 
documents and inscriptions which illustrate those 
early ages where history walks with a faint and 
flickering taper, he grasps them with enthusiasm, 
guards them with anxious care, and will not ex- 
change for thousands the relics of the hoary past. 
The Scriptures are the true antique. There 
is no disputing their claim to be genuine children 
of the Long Ago. They are colored with the 
hues of the primal ages. They reek with the 
odors of the young world. Since Moses wrote, 
**In the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth," thousands of years have come and 
gone, languages have risen and fallen, cities and 
empires have been born and buried, customs and 
manners and the physical aspect of the world 
have undergone almost innumerable transforma- 
tions. It was many centuries before Herodotus, 
many centuries before Homer — nay, many cen- 
turies before Greece itself deserved the name. 



THE SUPREME BOOK. 13 



Rome itself was still some seven hundred years 
in the future. Manetho, Berosus, Sanchoniathon, 
Confucius, were yet long arcs beneath the hori- 
icon. Hail to the oldest book extant ! Hail to 
the original records of humanity in which all the 
streams of history and tradition take their rise! 

The best writings of mere men have a very 
doubtful life. We deplore the loss of books of 
which only the names and authorship have come 
down to us, but which once moved and instructed 
the ages which they adorned. Some Vandal in- 
vasion, some Arabian torch, some backward lapse 
of the race such as Europe suffered in the Middle 
Ages, some revolution in the taste or the political 
circumstances of a people, is liable to cast poet 
and historian and philosopher into oblivion as 
profound as shelters some of the works of Livy 
and Tully and Aristotle, or as is now creeping 

J over the poetry of Spenser. But there is no un- 
certainty about the duration of the Bible. It is 
certain to outlast the world. It has borne a 
charmed life hitherto through many ambushes 
and battles; and it will be found proof against all 

" the ambushes and battles to come. No weapon 
formed against it will prosper. Infidels may de- 
nounce, apostate churches may suppress, ration- 
alistic critics belittle and betray, persecutors burn 

. and bury, legislatures eject from constitutions 



14 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

and schools; but it will all be in vain. The 
Bible is foreordained to live through everything. 
The world will always need it, and the world 
will always have it. When the last day looks 
out on the ashes of all our human libraries, this 
divine Book will survive the world it has blessed, 
and written out, it may be, in heaven's own ver- 
nacular, will have its difficulties and mysteries 
explained to the saint in the light of that throne 
from which it came. 

Yes; the Bible came from God, and it is the 
only book of which this can be said. And what 
has this one divine Book done for the world? 
Am I regenerate? It was the Bible as applied 
to my heart by the Holy Spirit that has made me 
so. Am I undergoing a process of sanctification 
which will finally bring me to a perfect charac- 
ter? I am sanctified through the truth; ''thy 
Word is truth." Am I on my way to the perfect 
happiness of heaven? It is the Bible which has 
pointed out the way and supplied motives to 
travel it; it is the chart and official guide-book of 
my whole journey to the city that has founda- 
tions. As much must be said of uncounted other 
Christians, present and past. The Book has al- 
ways stood for the vital interests of humanity. 
Its achievements have always been benedictions; 
its trophies, blessed resurrections and reconstruc- 



THE SUPRKME BOOK. 15 

i X 

:j tions. How many mourners lias it consoled by 

i its precious promises ! How many broken hearts 

;i has it made whole ! What fortitude it has 
breathed into the weary, the careworn, the des- 

|titute, the stricken! And when the world was 
about to vanish, how has it served as a minis- 
tering angel by the bed of sickness and pain and 
*'made even the gloomy vale of death a smile of 

'glory wear" ! Its sweet, low voice, telling of the 
after-life and the delightful home above which 

' Christ has prepared for his own, is worth more 
than all human friendships and kingdoms; and 

'gratefully the death-shades steal on, the shades 
that bring heaven into view. 

The Bible has done much for the race, but it 
will do more. It has already dried up many a 
fount of tears, changed many a desert into a gar- 
den, made many a soul noble and saintly, con- 
ducted many a tempest-tossed bark to anchorage 
and rest. And it will go on in this line of blessed 
1. achievements. It will continue to regenerate 
^ and sanctify and glorify as it has done for thou- 
sands of years. Sciences and art and literature 
will flourish, green and great, in the genial air it 
breathes around, till their fruit shall shake like 
Lebanon. Those precious Christian homes that 
now at too great intervals bestar and make our 
Christendom will gradually multiply till they 



.l6 THE SUPREMK THINGS. 

are found clustering sweetly under arctic ever- 
green and tropic palm and wherever man has 
gone. And finally, when divine purposes are 
ripe, the mighty Book which is the wisdom and 
power of God unto salvation, but which has hith- 
erto seemed to many so dull and plodding in its 
aspect and movement, will take on a transfigura- ( 
tion and move forward with such splendid and 
triumphant pace that nations will be born in a 
day, and a true golden age, such as holiness and 
love have sighed for from the beginning, will 
open on the redeemed earth. God speed that 
time of times! When it comes it will come as 
the work of the Book — of the Book read, preached, 
wielded by the Holy Ghost. What other book 
can do as much ? 

If a friend sincerely desires and endeavors to 
do me a favor, which through the perverseness of 
circumstances he is unable to perfectly realise, I 
am as much bound to love and honor him for his 
intention and effort as if they had been crowned 
with the greatest success. The Bible has ever 
aimed and exerted itself to exclude every form 
and degree of sin and sorrow from the world. If 
it has not succeeded it has been owing, not to any 
fault on its part, but to the perverseness of this 
human nature of ours, w4iich will not listen, 
though divine love speaks, nor obey, though di- 



THE SUPREME BOOK. 1 7 

vine power commands. But if man would have 
allowed it to fulfil its mission, long ere this the 
entire world would have been a Beulah, and the 
grapes of Eshcol have blushed and glowed on 
every vine. On man alone lies the responsibility 
for what the world is, compared with what it 
ought to be. The Bible has done its part; and 
though the race still lies in pitiful unhappiness 
and sinfulness, and ages yet may pass before its 
complete resurrection, we are to value our friend 
just as we should if what it proposes to do and 
struggles to do were already done, and the inten- 
tion of to-day were merely the shadow cast by 
the reality of yesterday. 

The Book that came from God; that tells us 
j more of God than do the eloquent heavens and 
earth; that shows us Christ and his eternal re- 
demption; that is the infallible teacher of old and 
young, of simple and learned, of humblest faculty 
and the loftiest; that is the guardian of morals, 
j the pillar of government and society, the supreme 
j counsellor, the light of death and best philosophy 
I of life, the inflexible champion of the true and 
the right, the way of salvation, the sword of the 
Spirit, and the wisdom and power of God — such a 
Book has no peer among the books of the world. 
All other books put together would not weigh as 
much as this one. For what it is, for what it has 

The Supreme Thinss. 2, 



l8 THE SUPREME THINGS* 

done, and for what it aims to do, it is an epical 
book, the Book of the ages, the Book of hu- 
manity. 

Is not this supreme character and value of the 
Scriptures intimated to us by Scripture itself 
when, in the last verses of the last book, the 
warning is uttered that if any man shall add to 
or take from ''the words of the book of this 
prophecy," God will ''take away his part out of 
the book of life," and "add to him the plagues ; 
that are written in this book " ? 

It seems that from the first there was danger 
that the majesty of Scripture and of its closed 
canon would not be sufficiently respected ; that 
some w^ould delude themselves, or at least delude 
others, with the idea that they w^ere inspired per- 
sons, and in that capacity proceed to add to or 
take from the already finished revelation. There 
was danger of this. Men have always shown 
themselves prone to spurious revelations. Reli- 
gious enthusiasts and impostors have abounded 
in every age. The future would tend strongly to 
be like the past. Persons would arise ambitious 
enough to covet, and hardy enough to grasp at, 
the consideration that belongs to special divine 
messengers, though conscious of being quite 
without claim to such a character. Persons 
would arise who would be enticed by Satan to 



THH SUPREME BOOK. I9 

sincerely believe themselves commissioned to 
speak and write God's infallible messages to their 
fellow-men: led by their sins and the adversary 
conjointly to the strong delusion of believing such 
a lie as that they were new Isaiahs, new Pauls, 
and even new Jesus Christs. Numbers would 
always be found to encourage such men, to 
prompt them, to follow them, to lodge indefinite 
power and honor in their hands. The past, 
with its Romulus and Numa and Zoroaster and 
Buddha, threatened to project itself into the fu- 
ture and produce a Mohammed, some twenty-five 
false Christs, Joseph Smith, and Ann Lee. Here 
was a danger, as well as the more frequent dan- 
ger that men would interpret the Scriptures so 
carelessly and unconscientiously as to make real 
additions to them and subtractions from them. 
Were not these among the dangers contemplated 
when the closing book of the canon lifted up its 
voice to the four winds to say, "If any man shall 
add to or take from me, God shall take away his 
part out of the book of life " ? 

But suppose the dangers threatened become 
the evil experienced. What if men should fail 
to respect the close of the canon — should add 
something human to the divine, or cut off from 
the divine whole a divine part? is there anything 
so very bad in this ? 



20 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

There was a spring on a mountain summit — > | 
pure, copious, full of health and fertility. Andf 
the waters overflowed. On all sides they trickled, 
and ran down, and spread out from the peak - 
among the clouds towards the mighty base; and \ 
thence on, east, west, north, south, through wide 
kingdoms to the sea. And wherever the beauti- ; 
ful waters came there laughed the grass and the 
flowers, there sang the corn and the vine, there 
shouted the mighty forest and the welcoming 
city. The flocks and herds drank of it at noon- 
tide and mutely thanked God. Nations of men 
bent their knees beside it, and grew fair and 
strong as they quaffed. How the pellucid depths 
mimicked the heavenly blue! But one day some 
madman, or some Eblis, chanced on that lofty 
and blessed and blessing spring, and poured into 
it a little fluid that looked almost like the water 
itself The waters leaped and hissed as if a de- 
mon had entered them. And so it had. From 
that moment a subtle mischief went streaming 
down through all the arteries of irrigation, to the 
roots of every plant, to the lips of every man; and 
there was nothing on these mountain slopes or 
along those champaigns that was not less fair and 
and healthful in consequence. Whole kingdoms 
drooped. Not a man, not a brute, not a blade of 
grass, accustomed to drink of those waters but 



THE SUPREME BOOK. 21 

suffered. Poisoned once, why not again ? Why 
not worse? w^hy not to death ? Where is the 
security? And so all the terrors threatened to 
swoop down on the once blooming and rejoicing 
continent. And down they would have swooped 
had not Azrael, the angel of death, lifted his 
sworded and terrible form by the side of that 
mountain spring, crying, '' If any man shall add 
to or take away from the w^ords of the book of 
this prophecy, God shall add to him the plagues 
that are written in this book." 

It was of so much consequence to protect the 
purity of Holy Scripture — that cloud-born foun- 
tain that waters the mountain of Christ's king- 
dom and all the world spread out at its foot — 
that the sword of an awful malediction, double- 
edged, was set brandishing over it. What does it 
mean, that threat to " take away his part out of 
the book of life"? Something very grave, very 
terrible, no doubt. Indeed, is it not the chief of 
terrors ? since elsewhere the same sacred writer de- 
clares that '* whosoever was not found written in 
the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. ' ' See 
the dreadful safeguard of the fountain ! See what 
God thinks of the importance and dignity of his 
Bible! See what he thinks of the sin and dam- 
age of mutilating or corrupting it! What other 
book has he put under such terrible protection ? 



22 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

God sees nothing inconsistent in a merciful 
gospel having terrible safeguards about it; noth- 
ing inconsistent in these safeguards being estab- 
lished by the gentlest of hands. The Book of 
good tidings ends with the heaviest of threats. 
John is the spokesman — John, apparently the 
gentlest of all the apostles. Did stern Elijah or 
the stern Baptist ever utter a severer thing? 
Both in his Word and in his providence God 
passed from promises to threats, from blessings to 
curses, from salvations to destructions, with a 
manner as if it had never occurred to him that 
men might find it hard to see how such opposites 
could meet in the same being. Jesus blades,, 
volcano-like, against the wicked scribes and 
Pharisees; and yet weeps over sinners, and ends i 
by dying for them: image as he is of that Father- * 
God who is both a consuming fire and love itself; 
who pours out his wrath and takes vengeance, 
and yet is full of compassion and gracious, very 
pitiful and of tender mercy. 

Is it anything new for a treasure to be put into 
a safe? anything new for roses to protect them- j 
selves with thorns ? anything new for lightnings i 
to accompany fruitful showers, or for pearls to lie 
at the bottom of stormy and fatal seas ? I went 
into a fortress where cannon frowned and bayonets 
gleamed and bristled; and what to see, if not the 



! THE SUPREME BOOK. 23 

i recralia of an ancient monarchy ? the yellow cir- 
I clet that had pressed the brows, and the yellow 
] sceptre that had graced the hands, of many gen- 
i erations of sovereigns, beaming with the soft and 
varied light of gems, all beautifnlly nestlmg 
amid the horrors of protecting steel and granite. 
It was the love of God lying in the bosom of his 
justice. It was the invitations and promises and 
tenderness and salvations of the gospel girded 
with wrath and menace and destruction. The 
one could not exist without the other. It is 
peace supported by war, life preserved by death. 

Has the great threat ever been fulfilled ? Has 
the two-edged sword, swung terribly on high, 
ever actually fallen on any? Alarmed by the 
threat of having their names erased from the 
book of life, have men shrunk from abusing the 
book of Scripture with their additions and sub- 
tractions? See, the steel seems clouded in spots, 
even seems red, red with fresh stains as well as 
with old ones! Must it not have fallen again and 
a-ain on offenders? Before the close of the 
canon the Jewish elders had added to the law 
and prophets a body of traditions for which they 
claimed equal authority, and by which, as Christ 
charged, they made void the law. Within the 
Christian church itself sprang up spurious Gospels 
which attempted to crowd themselves into the 






li 



24 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

sacred canon. Outside of Christianity, Mo1iam4 
nied both added and subtracted his Koran: out-« 
side of Christianity the Mormon impostor and-^ 
other impostors undeserving of mention have 
added and subtracted their pretended revelations. , 
Yes, it is to be feared that not a few have hadJ 
their names taken from the book of life. It 
would seem that the brandished sword has not 
wanted for victims. And it would also seem that 
there comes from it a gleam of warning to all in- 
terpreters of Scripture not to wrest its teachings, 
not to handle the Word of God deceitfully, not to 
explain away its passages, nor to foist into them 
meanings which they were never designed to 
have. 









1l 



! 



II. 



The kpreme &eei 



THE CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALS. 



THE supreme: creed. 27 



//. THE SUPREME CREED. 

An outcry against creeds is by no means an 
uncommon thing in these days. That creeds are 
sometimes false and sometimes abused is easily 
admitted; but that they are, on this account, to be 
quite thrown aside seems a piece of extravagance 
that we would hardly expect from thoughtful 
men. And yet a thoughtful man once put forth 
an essay w^ith this title, Tricth Superior to Creed. 
■ What did he mean by creed? Of course we 
1 freely admit that some truth is superior to some 
creeds (or at least to some articles of some creeds): 
say the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the Mormon, 
' the Infidel. But if it was meant that truth is su- 
perior to the Christian creed, to w^hat the great 
j bulk of intelligent, practical Christians agree in 
\ considering such, I deny it emphatically. 
I. The Christian creed is truth. 
Its articles are true as the freshest history, true 
as the latest science, true as the very mathemat- 
ics, true as the very God of truth. This we know 
as soon as w^e know that they are taught in a 
book that came from God. All his statements 
are reliable. We do not need to know specifically 
what the statements are. Just as one may know 



28 the; supreme things. 

that a certain building is the Government Mint 
and contains great stores of gold coin, without his 
ever having seen any of the money, so one may 
know that the Bible is divine and that it contains 
nothing but truth, though he is. as yet unac- 
quainted with the specific forms which that truth 
takes. This is the actual condition of some per- 
sons. They accept the Bible as the Word of God ; 
they have at last made up their minds to act ac- 
cordingly; but, owing to a variety of causes, they 
are as yet very poorly informed as to what it con- 
tains. It is to them largely a new Book. It is a 
Book seen descending from heaven and shining 
with the glory of miracles and prophecies and 
other evidences, but as yet a closed book to them. 
They reverently take it in hand, prepared to ac- _ 
cept whatever they may find taught within: but, 
beyond certain vague notions, just what they will 
find they know not. But this they know: what- 
ever they find will be true— true as the stars, true 
as He who made the stars, and in whom is no 
darkness at all. 

Whatever advantages, therefore, belong to 1 
truth in general belong to the Christian creed; | 
for it is truth. i 

2. The Christian creed is recognized truth. 
Here is a point in which the creed common to A 
all the great Christian denominations and confes- * 




THE SUPREME CREED. 29 

Sions has a positive advantage over truth iu 
general. 

Most truth is unknown. It never has been 
seen, and perhaps never will be seen by man. 
We know here and there a fact; but what is 
known is, as to bulk at least, the merest nothing 
by the side of that of which nothing is known. 
What are the few pebbles that a Newton picks 
tip on the shore to the great ocean of truth that 
lies all undiscovered and undiscoverable before 
him ? No doubt the most of the world's gold lies 
|- thousands of feet deep in the unopened mines of, 
'perhaps, unexplored countries. 

Such hidden truths may be of great service to 
, us. It is not necessary to know that the earth 
' revolves on its axis in order to get great advan- 
li tage from the fact. But there are kinds of advan- 
tage which unperceived truth can never give. It 
f cannot enlighten us, cannot delight us, cannot 
expand and elevate our minds, as so much 
knowledge ; does not allow of our consciously 
shaping our conduct with reference to it, as does 
truth that we distinctly recognize as such. 

The common articles of the Christian confes- 
sions are truth perceived, as well as truth exist- 
ent. Some of them have been perceived and 
acknowledged by all times and nations: as those 
that affirm superhuman beings, a supreme Deity, 



30 THE SUPREME THINGS. ^ 

divine providence, the obligation of religious 
worship, efficacious prayer, infallible oracles, im- 
mortal souls, limited probation, possible salvation. 
As to the doctrines which are peculiar to Chris- 
tianity, they so conform to the analogy of nature, | 
so suit the needs of men, above all are so clearly 
revealed in the Bible, that they are agreed to 
without dispute by all the great sections of Chris- 
tendom. They have come out of the realm of 
eternal night and have been seen. They have 
come out of the realm of eternal silence and been 
heard. They have told their story in the ear of 
Christendom, and Christendom in all her lan- 
guages has understood it and seen it to be true. 
The gold has been dug out of the depths and has 
gone as coin into general circulation; the pearls 
have been lifted from the deep sea-bottom into the 
stall of the jeweller, and thence into the caskets 
and diadems of the great. 

Here is an advantage which the general 
Christian creed has over truth in general; that is 
to say, over truth in a state of profound conceal- 
ment. It is truth brought to light, and set up 
high on a pedestal with its name written on its 
forehead, so that we can enjoy its transparent 
whiteness and beauty, shape our conduct by it, 
and have our minds illumined and enlarged by it 
in the form of knowledgcv 



THE SUPREME CREED. 3I 

3. The Christian creed is well-defined truth. 
Perhaps not one truth in a thousand of those 
which men at large are said to perceive ever ap- 
pears to them under a definite outline. They 
catch a glimpse of a nebulous star. Where is the 
boundary line between it and something else? 
Where does this end and the other begin ! Even 
this does not do justice to the unsatisfactory state 
of most minds. It is a confused scene of facts and 

j fractions or shadows of facts, joined together and 
superimposed in every sort of way; like the 
leaves which the winter w^nds have heaped up in 

! infinite disorder by the wall. How landscapes 
look that are filmed with mists ! Objects run to- 
gether; nothing stands by itself in sharp, clear- 
cut definition; you cannot draw the line between 
this and that. So appears most of the truth that 
most men are said to see, until science comes in 

^ with its separations and discriminations and 
classifications. But science as yet speaks only 

\ to the few. 

This misty indefiniteness is often a heavy sub- 
traction from the utility of truth. It abates the 
impression it makes. It is the mother of half- 
truths, which, as everybody has heard, are often 
as bad as whole falsehoods. It confounds differ- 

i ent truths. So it is the source of infinite misun- 
derstandings and disputes. In many cases it in- 



n 



32 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

volves the loss of the entire marginal features of 
a truth, which may be the most important of all 
If you see not the outskirts of some pictures, you 
might as well not see any part of them; if you 
miss the domes and turrets and colonnades of 
some structures, you might as well miss the whole 
of them. 

The Christian doctrines, as formulated in our 
great creeds, are not subject to such disadvan- 
tages. They are truth under the sharpest of 
definitions. Great pains have been taken by 
Christian scholars to give them the most clear, 
exact, and choice forms of expression. Each is 
a fortification designed to stand securely amid 
watchful enemies; not an un walled town that 
rambles leisurely into the country, as if the time 
had at last come when men learn war no more. 
See you yonder mountain rising abruptly from 
the water's edge, its profile lying across the clear 
Greek sky as if cut with a diamond blade? This 
is Mt. Athos. Nay: it is the doctrine of God, of 
the Incarnation, or of Immortality, or of Regen- 
eration, or of any other truth in the statement of 
which so many generations of care and ability 
have expended themselves. Science, under a 
different name, has long been doing in the reli- 
gious field the same work that she is now so 
much praised for doing in other fields. 



THE SUPREME CREED. 33 

4. The Christian creed is most important 
truth. 

Some truths are absolutely pernicious as 
knowledge. The less we know of them the bet- 
ter. We feel that we must shut our eyes on them 
and forbid them to our children. Other truths, 
though not positively corrupting, are not worth 
the knowing. They are as sapless as a withered 
December leaf, or as some of the questions of 
mediaeval school-men. We toss them aside con- 
temptuously; we refuse to waste time on them; 
pray, what matters it to anybody whether they 
are true or not ! Of the remainder, by far the 
larger part are, of course, mere commonplaces, 
with only moderate degrees of utility. Com- 
pared wuth truth in general, therefore, the Chris- 
tian doctrines, as agreed to in all the great Chris- 
tian confessions, are vastly the superior; for they 
are exclusively truth of the most important sort. 
They are religious truth. Nay; they are the very 
chief articles of religious truth. They are truths 
about God, responsibility, immortality, a Sa- 
viour, heaven, and hell. Are not such truths 
supreme ? Though we search the universe 
through, can we find a single fact that ventures 
to compete wath these in importance? Their 
stature is heroic. They are captains of tens, of 
hundreds, of thousands. Nay, every one of them 

Supreme Things. 'I 



34 ^HE supreme; things. 

wears a crown among all secular truths, and is 
throned about as high above them as they are 
above falsehood. What other truths have done 
a thousandth part as much to enlighten and con- 
sole man ? What others have ever succeeded in 
reforming and saving him? What others have 
so won to themselves the love and veneration of 
mankind, especially of the wisest and best ? Is 
there virtue in the world to-day, smouldering in 
the ashes of worldly cares and depravities, or 
leaping into flame on the altars of Christian con- 
secration? Is there happiness to-day in many 
human breasts; happiness that deserves the name; 
happiness that has in it the subtile sweetness of 
commending conscience and immortal hopes? 
Is there to-day in heaven an innumerable com- 
pany of redeemed and rejoicing men, destined to 
remain such for ever, and to be constantly in- 
creased, as long as the world shall last, by an 
upward-pouring stream of penitent sinners? In 
the last analysis it is to Christian doctrine that 
all this is due. Doctrine is the instrument with 
which the Holy Spirit reforms and elevates men 
in this world and saves them for the next. *^ Sanc- 
tify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." 

5. The Christian creed is tested truth. 

That is, it has been for ages subjected to the 
best practical tests of its reality and value, has 



THE SUPRKMK CREED. 35 

stood these tests, and now comes to us under the 
warranty of a vast historical experience. 

Suppose two truths. One is altogether new 
to us — but yesterday dug out of the mine. The 
other has been before the world from ancient 
times ; has been conspired against, and survived 
all conspiracies; has been assaulted, and survived 
all assaults ; has been scrutinized, outside and 
inside, in all lights and attitudes and distances, 
and has survived the terrible scrutiny; has been 
acted on by innumerable people in every variety 
of condition, and has survived this most terrible 
ordeal of all, proving most happy and profitable 
and splendidly suited to the nature and circum- 
stances of mankind; has stood against and tri- 
umphed over argument and scoflF, learning and 
wit, the inconsistencies and neglect of friends, as 
well as the covert slanders and bold attacks of 
enemies. Which of these two truths is the more 
precious and majestic? Is it not that which, 
equal in other respects, has had the magnificent 
testing ? 

Now the Christian creed is truth of the thor- 
oughly tested sort, while truth in general is not. 
Most of the truth that gets recognition comes 
before the world too vaguely and transiently and 
seldom, and, above all, too uninterestingly, to 
receive a thorough historical testing. Indeed, 



36 the; supreme; things. 

the greater part of it is not of sufficient import- 
ance to deserve it. But not so with the con- 
sensus of Christian doctrines. In sharp, heavy 
outline they have been continuously in the eye 
of the world for centuries. They have been 
watched with the eyes of eagles night and day. 
They have been approached from all sides, and 
traversed in every direction by keenest human 
thought. They have been gazed at through mi- 
croscope as well as telescope. They have had 
to fight for a living. They have, countless times, 
been wrestled for and against and with ; have 
themselves fought countless battles, sometimes 
for existence and sometimes for a throne ; now 
against snares, and now against open violence; 
now against the polished shafts of wit and fancy, 
and now against the heavy battle-axes of logic 
and pretended science. Out of all conflicts they 
have come stronger; even touching the earth has 
often seemed to give them, like Antaeus, new 
strength; death-grapples have always been vic- 
tories to them. Century after century, men of 
every class and circumstance have gone to them 
for solace, and found it; for virtuous inspiration, 
and found it; for the way to heaven, and found it. 
The tide of human experience and need has been 
coming and going on these great headlands of 
thought for many and many a life-time, and yet 



THE SUPREME CREED. 37 

they remain. Remain, do I say? They have 
been polished and shaped and lifted into larger 
conspicuousness as the ages go by. To-day the 
sailors are sailing by these unfailing and unfal- 
tering landmarks as never before. 

6. The Christian creed is written truth. 

In this respect it has the advantage of truth 
in general, even of known truth. For most 
known truth is either bodiless, or it has been 
embodied in such rude forms as the moment may 
suggest to the tongues of unskilful and careless 
and busy men. They seldom speak it with care- 
ful attempt at precision ; still more seldom do 
they put it into well-considered writing. 

But the great Christian doctrines have spread 
themselves out on the printed page of many a 
confession. They have taken on forms that can 
be seen with the eyes as well as pronounced with 
the lips. And these forms are various to suit 
different styles of thought and different degrees 
of apprehension. So they address themselves to 
multitudes of people. So they come on the same 
person from many sides and at many angles. 
They need to do this in order to get saving hold 
of such a difficult world. As crystallized in wri- 
ting, as incarnated in print, the main religious 
truths come home more easily to the apprehen- 
sion and memory, permit us to study them more 



38 



the; SUPREME THINGS. 



at our leisure, enable us to communicate them 
more conveniently to others, and so pass them 
down more purely and swiftly to other genera- 
tions. 

7. The Christian creed is inspired truth. 

For it correctly reports to us the main teach- 
ings of an inspired Book. 

Out of the Scriptures there is no inspired 
writing. There is genius, there is learning, 
there is eloquence — and plenty of them. In fact 
the world abounds in books and manuscripts that 
are mainly true and good; but, with a single ex- 
ception, not one of them came directly from God. 
It is all human work, subject to human fallibility 
as to both substance and form, and having in it 
only the secondary dignity and promise of a hu- 
man intellect. But, thanks to heaven, the Chris- 
tian doctrines practically came down direct from 
heaven. They were inbreathings from God. The 
Holy Spirit, that wondrous artist, painted on the 
minds of holy men the great Christian ideas till 
each sacred soul was an incomparable picture- 
gallery ; and not a man, how^ever skilful with 
the pencil, not an angel, however heavenly the 
lines and hues he could make, was permitted to 
mingle his guessing and fallible strokes with the 
divine work. And then God — as wondrous an 
artist in the sensible as in the ideal — God him- 



THE SUPREME CREED. 39 

self, with no second, wrought out sensible shrines 
for these thought-pictures, so far as their best 
expression required, and in all cases chose the 
vehicles in which they might ride visibly forth 
to their work among men. These inspired de- 
liverances of inspired truth many generations of 
devout scholars have brought together into con- 
densed forms which faithfully reproduce to us 
the heaven-descended truth. 

This great origin doubly assures us of both 
the exactness and the importance of the great 
Christian doctrines. It also gives them the high- 
est possible extrinsic dignity, and impressively 
promises to them splendid successes. A divine 
origin is the noblest origin a thing can have. A 
divine impulse is the mightiest impulse a sun 
can have; and lo, how grandly it goes spinning 
through the spaces ! And the knowledge w^hich 
God puts in form and launches mightily forth 
on its glorious orbit, he himself attends with all 
the shining cortege of his infinite attributes. He 
will not forsake his own. He will ever look 
after the success of his own measures, the safety 
and triumph of his own Word. He will prepare 
the way for it. He will put underneath it, on 
either hand, an everlasting arm. And he will be 
its rerew^ard — pushing between his Israel and the 
pursuing Egyptian a double-faced pillar that 



40 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

sheds soft shadows athwart the tropic sun for the 
one, and shoots glances of fire into the face of 
the other. Such a convoy and such an origin 
mean for the Christian creed, sooner or later, 
splendid successes. They mean a Canaan flow- 
ing with milk and honey, by-and-by. Some- 
thing grand will come to it at last, let no one 
fail to believe. An Austerlitz, nay, a thousand 
Austerlit^es in one, a millennium, is on its shi- 
ning way to the militant Word. 

A scheme of doctrine that is not only truth, 
but is also recognized, well-defined, tested, su- 
premely important, written, and inspired truth, 
is certainly vastly superior to truth in general. 
By the side of it all other truth is of little value. 
All true religion roots itself in it. It is the last 
foundation, on which rests whatever is precious 
in the Christian institutions and history. Its 
fame is world-wide. Its friends are a mighty 
host. It has won from them such love and 
loyalty that multitudes have been willing to die 
for it, and other multitudes stand ready on oc- 
casion to do the same. In short, it is epical 
truth. Its aspect is majestic, its stature heroic, 
its achievements illustrious, beyond compare. 
Nothing else has so mightily stirred the fears 
and the hopes of men. It includes in itself vas- 
ter executive forces for such a world as this than 



THE SUPRKMK CRKED. 41 

all other schemes of thought put together. And 
it has actually done more to shape for good the 
world's character and fortunes, being the wisdom 
and power of God unto salvation. 
I Creeds may be altogether false. When true 
they may be too minutely drawn out, and serve 
to promote divisions rather than piety. But some 
creed is indispensable. The man who insists 
upon it that he will not give distinct assent to 
any article of religious belief whatever, that he 
will not be held to definite statements of any sort 
on the subject of religion, is absurd; he has al- 
ready left consistency and common sense and the 
Bible far behind him. Does not the Book re- 
quire faith as the condition of salvation ? Can 
one have saving faith without believing some- 
thing, or without distinctly confessing his belief? 
A Christian without an acknowledged creed is an 
impossibility. It may be long or short ; but it 
must be long enough to cover certain fundamen- 
tals. And what are they but those doctrines on 
which all the great Christian denominations and 
confessions agree? doctrines without belief in 
which practical obedience to Christ cannot exist. 



Ill 



Tte kpreme Xocieties, 



THE TWO TRINITIES. 



THK SUPREME SOCIETIES. 45 



///. THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 

The superior power of associated eflfort has 
long been understood. For purposes of war, for 
purposes of government, for purposes of business, 
and to some extent for purposes of religion, men 
from the beginning have known that they must 
combine their individual resources in order to 
secure the largest amount of result. But it is 
only within a time comparatively at our own 
doors that the principle of associated resources 
and labor has received its best comprehension 
and largest application. At present we organize 
ourselves for almost all purposes. We put our 
heads together, we put our hands together, we 
put our purses together; and so great works are 
done, to no one of which would the means of any 
single person have dared to look. Factories, 
railroads, steamers, telegraphs — indeed, nearly 
all the peculiar marvels of our times — are the 
product of partnerships and companies. ''Will 
you join me?'' says one to others. It is the large 
aflSrmative which this question receives that 
gives us the chief secular glory of our day. 

Of late years, more than ever, good men have 
seen the importance of enlisting the prodigious 



46 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

power of association in behalf of religions enter- 
prises. The sanctuary, once built by one wealthy 
person, the people now build; the missions that, \ 
here and there, individuals once undertook on 
their separate responsibilities, are now under- 
taken by missionary societies in which are united 
the skill and money and prayers of vast denomi- 
nations of Christians; on all sides great institu- 
tions for purposes of education and charity and 
reform have sprung up, in which men, under 
certain fixed rules, cooperate with great success 
for the relief and elevation of mankind. Such 
institutions have become the glory of Great Brit- 
ain and the United States. They are a great 
Christian consensus. They are the abbeys and 
cathedrals in which the devout of our time min- 
gle their service to God. They are so many 
indispensable Niles— each beginning in a thou- 
sand petty streams among the highlands under 
our Christian equator, and thence going forth, a 
mighty confluent, to carry bloom and fertility to 
all the lowlands of the world. What great names 
are the British and Foreign Bible Society, the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions, and other names well known to us all ! 
What commanding influence they exert, what 
great services for God do they represent, what 
splendid channels they are for conveying refresh- 



THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 47 

|. ment, cleansing, and life to the nations ! Let 
God be thanked for such religious societies! May 
I they last for ever — or rather, till there is no fur- 
1 ther need of them; till, with God's help, they 
I have been instrumental in establishing the new 
. earth in which shall dwell righteousness. 

But, useful and noble and mighty as are these 
voluntary religious societies of our times, they 
j are wonderfully outshone in these respects by 
. certain others on which rests the hoar of extreme 
j antiquity. There are four sacred societies which 
-we may not only freely praise, but which deserve 
that we uncover and bend low before their su- 
preme worth and majesty. They are all of divine 
origin; they all dwelt and wrought in primeval 
ages; they are all indissoluble, and even unim- 
. pairable; and they all have done, and are doing, 
and w^ll do, feats of power and usefulness far 
grander than any others that ever astonished 
human eyes. 

The first of these supreme societies is God 
himself. 

God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here 
is a mysterious and sublime Society of Persons 
I who are one in substance and equal in power and 
glory; three Divine Persons united in making, 
governing, redeeming, and sanctifying this world; 
I united in making, governing, blessing, and glori- 



48 th:e: supremk things. 

fying all worlds. The Persons of the Trinity 
cooperate in eternal partnership : a partnership 
existing before all dates and outlasting all dates; 
a partnership which cannot but be, but which is 
in the noblest sense free, voluntary, harmonious; ; 
a partnership almighty and all-wise, to which 
mistake and defeat are alike impossible; a part- 
nership beaming forth in every direction the 
purest feelings, the loftiest aims, the sublimest 
benevolence, and the most august deeds, as no 
sun ever beamed forth its light on surrounding 
worlds. Behold the three equal peaks of the same 
anountain-top whose snowy whiteness nurses, and 
along whose sides descend, all streams of comfort 
and profit to the creature ! This Divine Soci- 
ety — throned on the highest point in the uni- 
verse, pavilioned in its best beauty and magnifi- 
cence, sleeplessly and lovingly doing its work 
without shadow of friction or weariness, amid the 
profound calm of endless resources — of course has 
no peer in all the round of nature. All other 
glory is naught by reason of the glory that excel- 
leth. Father of waters to a thirsty universe^ — 
such is that triple society of Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost where begins everything of good and 
fair; itself the fairest and grandest and best that 
thought, that mighty wanderer, has ever succeded 
in finding or imagining. 



THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 49 

The second of these epical societies consists of 
the holy angels. 

An organized body of spiritual intelligences, 
under leaders of various orders, and inhabiting 
that beautiful region called heaven; called to the 
immediate presence and higher services of Deity; 
having a common nature, a common abode, and 
, a common style of function and life; bound to 
I one another in special intercourse and affection — 
Q the holy angels are by the will of God a special 
J body corporate, a celestial society between God 
, and man in the order of being, and equipped for 
j heavenly duties in a manner peculiar to them- 
' selves. The Society of the Trinity is infinite, 
and all its beauty and nobleness are of the infinite 
kind: this angelic society and all its beauty and 
nobleness are of the finite sort, but still a most 
I glorious sort: their natures lofty, ethereal, swift; 
their number beyond counting; their days immor- 
tal; their origin remote beyond Adam, and, it may 
be, all the vast geologic chronologies; never 
stained with the least sin or sorrow; perfect char- 
acters, and a perfect theatre for them to work and 
develop on; happy and mutually loving to their 
full glorious capacity; never the least friction in 
the working of the heavenly partnership and 
brotherhood. How that angelic society shines 
on its high places! Their eyes are stars. Stars 

The Supreme Tiling's, A 



50 the: supreme things. 

are about their white brows and sprinkled over 
all their white robes. Their pictured wings beat 
balm; and away they go, swifter than lightning, 
on the great errands of the Greatest. Look up, 
O Faith, through thy night-sky, and see such a 
constellation as astronomer never saw, such a 
constellation as eclipses Orion and the chambers 
of the South, a constellation that in its orderly 
and everlasting array gloriously lives and sings 
and works as well as shines. It is the galaxy of 
the holy angels, the society of creation's first- 
born; a society next to the divine, though infi- 
nitely below it. Could we but look in closely on 
that goodly fellowship and see the shining details 
of that heavenly organization by which they coop- 
erate in the service of Jehovah, we should feel 
that they are worthy of their place next to the 
King. 

Another sacred society is that of departed 
saints of the human race. 

These dwell in heaven like the holy angels; 
but they have a nature and history and training 
peculiar to themselves — are bound to one another 
by special bonds of sympathy and motive and 
experience ; are, in short, a distinct celestial 
household, though on terms of closest intimacy 
with that other celestial household of which we 
have just spoken. 



I 



THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 51 



The glory of this household is that it is a 
saved household; the glory of the angelic is that 
it never needed saving. The glory of this house- 
hold is that it is a completely purified one; the 
glory of the other is that it never needed purify- 
ing. The glory of the one is that their garments 
have been made white in the blood of the Lamb; 
the glory of the other is that their robes have 
never needed, and so have never received, the 
whitening baptisms of Calvary. The glory of 
the one is that all their sorrow is gone, and that 
on the background of their fear and trial has 
come a perfect day that seems all the brighter for 
the night just behind; the glory of the other is 
that from the beginning no pain has ever min- 
gled with their joy, no darkness preceded their 
light. 

Pure spirits, bright and almost as countless as 
the sunbeams, ever increasing in number by arri- 
vals from the earth, and in beauty and power 
from the natural ascent of their characters and 
destiny; some of them not only freshly arrived 
from this world, but even freshly arrived on the 
green shores of being, w^hile others have been 
citizens of the Golden City from the days of Abel 
and Adam; winged for all holy missions, loving 
for all helpful doing, strong and unwearied for all 
glorious feats of divine service, blissful to the 



52 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

overflowing of their mighty cup — what a society 
is that which, zone within i^one, touches the daz- 
zling zones of the holy angels, and shares heaven 
with them! Hail, elect partnership! Hail, glo- 
rious brotherhood! Hail, goodly company of mar- 
tyrs sent heavenward by swords and lions and 
fires, and all ye faithful cross-bearers of every age, 
of whom, though nameless in history, the world 
was not worthy! Ah, here is a guild at which 
only to look makes a human eye kindle and a 
human heart leap. Here is a Society of Jesus 
worth belonging to. Who does not desire to 
belong to it, at least when it is impossible to stay 
here any longer? 

Still another sacred society is the church of 
Christ on earth. 

Penitent believers, coming together under the 
rites of baptism, the Lord's Supper, and public 
vows to Christ and one another,* form a sacred so- 
ciety for mutual improvement and the conquest 
of the world to their king. It is a divinely ap- 
pointed institution for these purposes; a body 
corporate, with written constitution and laws that 
define object and modes of proceeding, and rights 
and privileges, as fully and precisely as ever did 
charter of any secular corporation. Disembodied 
saints are in heaven; the embodied are on earth. 
The former are in a state of reward; the latter are 



THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 53 

in a state of education: the former are in a state 
of rest; the latter are in a state of warfare. There 
is at present no conscious intercourse between the 
two societies — a curtain that is never lifted hanof- 
ing its thick folds between the heavenly and the 
earthly. So they are two. 

Though now occupying a much lower place, 
the church below has something of the dignity of 
the church above. Like that, it owes its exist- 
ence and plan of structure, not to man, but to the 
wisdom and will of Almighty God. It has a 
measure of the same aims, affections, prospects, 
comforts, friends, illuminations. But in many 
respects there is unlikeness. We have the beauty 
of sincerity over against their beauty of perfec- 
tion. We have the beauty of repentance ; they that 
of sinlessness. We have the beauty of faith and 
hope; they that of sight and fruition. We have 
the beauty of progress; they that of arrival. We 
have the glory of successful battle; they that of 
triumphant rest. This lower church is not so 
low but that it has God for its Father, Jesus for 
its leader, holy angels for its ministering spirits, 
and the Holy Ghost for its permanent Teacher 
and Guest. Look at that inspired Volume of 
which the church on earth is custode, and which 
she holds aloft to the benighted nations, a far- 
flashing Fresnel, in her radiant hand ! See her 



54 i'he: supreme things. 

fair rites and templed worship, her goodly cove- 
nants and promises and laws. Hear swelling 
within, like the anthem in which ocean answers 
to ocean, ''the solemn voice of her unending 
song.'' See what God has done for her and will 
do for her; the history she already has, and the 
history she is sure to have. Open your eyes on 
the church of the millennium. Follow with 
your patient look her triumphant ascent through 
the ao^es till the church below embraces the 
church above, and the two kindred societies be- 
come one. Then call her the bride of Christ — 
looking forth ''as the morning, fair as the moon, 
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with 
banners." 

There are some who see no beauty in Christ 
himself: it is not surprising that such persons see 
no beauty in his church. There are some who 
see no worth in the Scriptures themselves: it is 
not strange that such people see no worth in 
those who hold to Scripture doctrines and try to 
walk by Scripture precepts. What the church 
now is they do not understand, and they have no 
faith in what the church is training to be. They 
comprehend not her motives and principles; they 
interpret uncharitably her characteristics and de- 
portment; they charge against her, too often, 
slanders as truth, and the faults of counterfeit 



THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 55 

Christians as if they were the faults of the genu- 
ine. Because the best have their faults, and be- 
cause some who dress in the Christian robes are 
unworthy of the Christian name, down goes a 
foul blot on the fair fame of the King's own, 
whose are all the beatitudes, and who is daily 
struggling through the furnace into gold. The 
church, like everything else, has its outward and 
its inward. God sees both, and gives us the 
Song of Solomon. The world sees only the sur- 
face, and is not sorry to remember that a sepul- 
chre may be very w^hite. Yes; and it may con- 
tain Christ. 

These four great religious societies, viz., the 
Trinity, the holy angels, departed saints, the 
church on earth, are the noblest combinations 
of individuals known to us. All other good and 
powerful fellowships are but shades and echoes of 
these. These are the high patterns according to 
which, and in the light of which, all labor and 
capital should organize themselves. Then would 
religion penetrate all business and all professions 
and all persons, as the air penetrates with vital 
stimulus and purification the pores and lungs 
of all bodies. 

Four special divine societies, not peers to one 
another, but one rising above another in stately 
succession till, last of all and unspeakably above 



56 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

all, towers the white summit of Godhead, which 
is Trinity in Unity. None of these societies are 
unprogressive save that of the Trinity. That 
does not need to progress. It is already beyond 
all distance and above all height. The Deity 
grows not, brightens not. But of the rest, each 
society steadily advances towards the one next 
higher. The church below is constantly being 
pushed up into a closer neighborhood with the 
church above; the church above is continually 
advancing on the sphere of the holy angels; and 
the holy angels are ever moving forward on the 
endless path towards God. From the necessity of 
the case, all finite goodness must be ever pro- 
gressive. 

And the fact is that whoever would advance 
towards God must suffer himself to be drawn 
into the current of this associational progression. 
And he must enter the current in this world. 
The church here feels it setting her towards the 
church yonder; the church yonder feels it setting 
her towards the angels, and the angels feel it set- 
ting them forward, in brightness and greatness 
and usefulness, towards the God whom they can 1 
never reach. To enter this upward-going cur- 
rent one must, as a rule, enter in this world 
Christ's company of pledged and organised dis- 
ciples. He cannot enter the stream at the heav- 



THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 57 

enly church, nor at the holy angels. He must 
come in at the beginning of the stream where 
floats the ark of the lowest church of all. Then 
he will begin to ascend. Then, for the first time, 
he will be in the embraces of a force whose steady 
movement is bearing him away from darkness, 
sin, and misery. The movement may be as imper- 
ceptible as the approach of summer; considerable 
time may pass, and still no change of scenery be 
noticed; but really himself and the whole church 
are on the bosom of a mighty drift which, in pro- 
cess of time, will bring them forward to where 
the saints in glory are, and so on and on towards 
the unspeakable goal of the infinite, a goal that 
never can be reached, but is always getting 
nearer and nearer. Blessed voyage ! Glorious 
upward-going river that is ever getting broader 
and deeper and swifter, that is ever coming into 
purer airs and sunnier ^ones and fairer prospects! 
Surely every man should push out his shallop 
from the little creek where it lies idling into the 
mighty stream that, in defiance of gravitation, is 
seeking God. 

Do we not want to move upward and heaven- 
ward and God ward ? It were, however, better to 
ask whether we can content ourselves with the re- 
verse movement — downward for ever towards the 
opposite pole of supreme sin and sorrow; for that 



58 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

really is the alternative. Two Gulf Streams run 
side by side, but in opposite directions. Into one 
or the other we must launch ; nay, now that I think 
of it, we are already launched on one or the other* 
but with the power, if unhappily we are on the 
descending stream, of passing over to the other; a | 
power which we possess for the present, but which 
is ever lessening as the current grows stronger. 
I/et no one allow it to master him. Up, man, 
and ply the oars before you come to the rapids ! 
The idea of being in the drift of perpetual ascent 
and improvement, is it not a pleasant one? The 
idea of being in the drift of perpetual descent and 
deterioration, is it not a sad one? Then up, 
man ! bare your arms and struggle hard for an 
exchange of streams. Never mind the grasping, 
the sweating, the gasping, the soreness of hands. 
The object is worth all it costs. Make the oars 
bend and the waters foam till you join that up- 
ward-going fleet whose name is the Church of 
Christ. This is according to instructions; do not j 
take any liberties with them. Strike the river 
of God just where he bids you strike it; not at the 
point occupied by the holy angels, not at the 
point of the church above, but at the point of 
the church below, the organized body of living, 
genuine Christian believers. Make one of that 
great fleet which surely has Christ on board. 



I 

) 

THE SUPREME SOCIETIES. 59 

And then you will have mighty helps against 
your hindrances. You will move upward instead 
j of downward; from good to better, instead of 
i from bad to worse. And in due course you will 
i reach the plane of the just made perfect, in due 
(course the plane of the angels; and though we 
j; cannot go on to say that in due course you will 
f: reach the divine plane, we can say that you will 
3' be for ever getting nearer to it, and during the 
ll glorious ascent will always have the presence and 
). benediction of that sublimest society of all, which 
consists of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. _ 



IV. 



Tlie kpreme Koieriiiiieii' 



THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 



I 



the: supreme government. 63 



IK THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT. 

Some nations go by the name of stcbjects. 
They are British or German or Austrian subjects, 
being under regal or imperial government. But 
we never hear of subjects of the United States. 
The people of this country call themselves citi- 
zens. As republicans they think themselves free 
of all men, call no man master, even make them- 
selves out to be sovereigns. 

Still, whatever name men bear and whatever 
name they choose for themselves, whether royal- 
ists or republicans, subjects or citizens, it cannot 
be concealed that every person the wide world 
over is a true subject. The government visibly 
nearest us is republican; but then, outside of this 
and closely embracing it at all points, is another 
of far greater significance; and this government 
is monarchical in the strongest sense. It is that 
of the King eternal, immortal, invisible. He 
royally governs us by the laws of nature. His 
providence shapes our courses and fortunes, com- 
pels us this way and that, gives us this and that 
experience, after a most sovereign manner. He 
makes and writes out statutes for us in our con- 
sciences and in a book. Behold the Law and the 



64 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

Prophets! Behold the Gospel of Evangelists and 
Apostles! These are his crown, his throne, his 
sceptre towards us. They make him our King. 

Our relation to God as subjects is no new 
thing. It goes back as far as we do. That little 
child whose helplessness is embosomed and car- 
ried about by parental care and strength is also 
embosomed and carried about by the great gov- 
ernment of God. Not sooner did the light find 
its way through the silky curtains of those dawn- 
ing eyes than did God, with a crown on his head 
and a sceptre in his hand, look in at them and 
say, My subject. And he keeps on saying the 
same till his words fall on the dull ears of the 
second childhood. 

The individual goes back to no time when he 
was not the subject of this heavenly Monarch. 
Nor does the race itself go back so far, though it 
be more than sixty centuries, as to reach a time 
when no divine sceptre stretched over it. From 
Eden downward God has always governed men 
right royally. No period nor race nor nation 
in which he has not set up his throne. Some- 
times we speak of the Hebrew Theocracy as if 
God had never been King over the Gentiles; but 
the fact is that his kingly relation to the chosen 
people was but a more visible form of that sov- 
ereignty that had already been ruling for ages 



ji THE SUPRKMK G0VE:RNMKNT. 65 

I over young and old, high and low, bond and free, 
i in all lands. '^A glorious high throne from the 
) beginning is the place of thy sanctuary.'' All 
; nations, all races, all periods, historic and prehis- 
toric, have come and gone at the hands of his 
imperial providence — have been thoroughfared 
in every direction by the steps of One on whose 
head are many crowns and in his hand many 
sceptres. 

And we shall be subjects always. There is no 
loophole of retreat through which, by some dex- 
terous management, one may slip out from the 
kingdom of God. To do this one would have to 
go farther and manage better than ever did crea- 
ture yet. Should a sense of our subjection to 
God prove irksome to us, we may for a time get 
rid of the unpleasant sense; but as to getting rid 
of the subjection itself, where is the man that 
will see that feat accomplished? The German 
subject who dislikes the empire may, by going at 
the most but a few miles, cross the frontier and 
find himself a German subject no longer. Who 
shall cross the frontier of God's empire? The 
Austrian subject w^ho dislikes the empire of the 
Hapsburgs may perhaps, by a well -contrived 
insurrection, cast off the odious rule and become 
an Italian again; but who by any possibility can 
make successful insurrection against the rule of 

Supreme Tliinga, C 



66 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

Jehovah? No; as a man is born so will he live 
and so will he die, under the same steadfast sov- 
ereignty. 

, And this divine sovereignty will last through 
all generations as well as through the individual 
life. Is not God 5'onder, and yonder? Look 
carefully away into the distance, and you will be 
sure to catch at least a glimpse of him in his 
shining royalty. He sets up his throne in the 
next century and the next and the next, and in 
what century is the glory not shining? I ascend 
my Pisgali and look down through ages beyond 
counting, and lo, the King is in every one of 
them ! I take the best telescope that heaven can 
fashion and add to my vision all the ages that 
angels or God shall see, and nowhere along these 
awful stretches of duration do I find this infinite 
Monarch in a state of abdication or dethronement. 
*'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." 
''Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and 
thy dominion is from generation to generation." 

Man is a complete subject. Body and soul, he 
is wholly in God's power. Now God be thanked 
that no other being is awful with such power as 
this! The laws of God are laid on all parts of 
our nature and on all our relations. In this 
respect the divine King goes before, far before, 
any human one. The secondary monarchs that 



THK supreme; government. 67 

head our tribes and nations single out a few out- 
ward acts to be bidden or forbidden, and put forth 
their laws accordingly; but by far the larger por- 
tion of outward acts, and all our thoughts and 
feelings, are left untouched by these mortal scep- 
tres. But the immortal sceptre of the King of 
kings is laid at full length on all things without 
exception within his endless dominion, especially 
on all that come in any degree under the control 
of the human will. I cannot mention a thing in 
the least affected by my choice in regard to which 
God has not sent me a law which he will enforce. 
See how wide is my subjection! Everything vol- 
untary is under the yoke of conscience and Scrip- 
ture, which is the yoke of God. The authority 
of God is a close gleaner after all other authori- 
ties. It comes in and appropriates not only what 
others have reaped, but also their profuse leav- 
ings, till not a stalk is left. That broad, keen 
sickle sweeps the whole field clean at a stroke — 
I so thoroughly are we subjects, so completely do 
our whole moral being and history lie within the 
golden circle of this crown of crowns. Though 
the least apparent of all sovereignties; though it 
gives to our senses no certain signals of itself in 
the form of visible palaces and regalia and a dia- 
demed and throned personage who is the centre 
of all the splendid pomp, still this sovereignty of 



68 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

God is the most real, emphatic, and commanding 
that our thoughts can conceive. 

And it is the most absolute. Nothing to hin- 
der God from doing exactly as he pleases. In 
making laws and executing them he has nothing 
to consult but his own sweet and holy will. The 
chief magistrate of a republic must guide himself 
by that constitution which others have made for 
him; the Queen must not act without her Minis- 
ters and Parliament; and even the emperor in 
what is called an absolute monarchy feels that he 
must shape his rule with some regard to public 
opinion. His absolutism is "tempered by fear 
of assassination." But what has God to fear in 
case his course should cross the wishes of his sub- 
jects? His independence is perfect. Who shall 
bring him to account? Who shall make him 
afraid ? Show us the armies that can manage to 
drive the Omnipotent from his seat. He can 
with entire safety set at defiance all the wishes 
and mights of all his creatures. In point of fact 
he does work "all things after the counsel of his 
own will." Behold the Absolute! Not merely 
Chief Magistrate is he, not merely First Consul, 
Prince President, Lord Protector, King, but 
immemorial and immeasurable Autocrat and Dic- 
tator, taking his authority from no one, giving 
no account of any of his matters, allowing no 



i 



THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT. 69 

appeal from his tribunal, issuing his laws and 
executing them without taking counsel of any; 
in fine, doing according to his will in the armies 
of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth 
without any to stay his hand or say to him, What 
doest thou ? 

When we look at the great European absolute 
monarchy, and see near a hundred millions of 
people holding life and all at the beck of one 
man, we can hardly fail of being deeply im- 
pressed. How the Romanoff shines from his ter- 
rible height, especially to his own proper sub- 
jects! Do they forget that they are living under 
a sceptre ? Do they forget that the sceptre under 
which they live is absolute ? Yet what is the 
monarchy of all the Russias by the side of the 
monarchy of God? Shall men look up dizzily at 
the height of the one and yet have no eye of 
amazement for that other summit so unspeakably 
above? Shall they quietly drop out of their lives 
and thought that the divine government is not a 
democracy nor a republic nor an oligarchy, nor 
even a mere monarchy, but a monarchy the sole 
spring of which is one infinite and irresponsible 
will? Shall they bow and tremble before an 
earthly throne, which began to-day and may end 
to-morrow, and yet feel no sinking of soul before 
that divine throne which shines out its unlimited 



^O THE SUPREME THINGS. 

authority to the uttermost limits of creation and 
abides in unwasted grandeur from everlasting to 
everlasting? What though we do not just at 
present see about us certain things such as are 
wont to proclaim a monarch of the first class, the 
gorgeous capital, the palace, the marching armies! 
These things or their equivalents exist, and some 
of them have been seen by some. A little be- 
yond the edge of common vision troop legions of 
angels. Away in the sky the city of God uprears 
ineffable palaces, where his august court is held 
and his glories blaze. Sometimes his shining 
soldiery have trod the earth in view of men; 
sometimes prophets have caught glimpses of the 
metropolis Jerusalem, fixed on its everlasting hills 
or coming down from God out of heaven. On a 
day that hastens, the glorious '^pomp and circum- 
stance" that really belong to the great monarchy 
will be seen by all. For the present we will take 
it on trust. The Bible shall be to us for eyes. 

Are we ever conscripts? The subjects of a 
human king are held to owe him, on occasion, 
military service; and many a time does the trum- 
pet sound and imperatively call them to the field. 
God, our King, has his wars. They are of such 
a nature that the youngest, the oldest, and the 
weakest can successfully engage in them; are of 
such a nature that the services of every subject 



THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT. 71 

are in demand. So a heavenly trumpet sounds. 
So forth we must go into the field of sharp and 
steady conflict with sin and Satan, God's ancient 
enemies and ours. No exceptions are allowed 
under any excuse whatever. We can neither beo- 
nor buy off from the holy campaign. No press- 
ure of business or of infirmity will secure our 
discharge. It is a case of conscription. Behold 
the roll— every name is on it. Hearken to the 
trumpet— every name is shouted to the four 
winds. Says the herald, ''War is declared, the 
foe is abroad; go forth, every one of you, to the 
fight. Take to yourselves the w^hole armor of 
God. Be good soldiers. Quit you like men, be 
strong, watch you, stand fast; for you wrestle not 
against flesh and blood, but against principalities 
and powers of the darkness of this world. You 
have evil tendencies — conquer them. You have 
evil habits— slay them. Temptations to new 
sins, as well as to old ones, assault you daily- 
fight against them with all your forces. To him 
that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of 
life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. 
But he that is overcome will get no quarter from 
his foes and no indulgence from his sovereign." 

Thouo:h the orovernment of God has these 
strong and stern features; though we are to it in- 
tense, permanent, complete, and conscript sub- 



72 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

jects; yet the subjection is altogether righteous and 
exceedingly honorable. God is our rightful King. 
He has a perfect right to reign over the race from 
its distant beginning to its distant ending; to 
reign over all its relations and interests, activities 
and experiences, of every kind and degree; to 
reign over them as a conscripting King whose 
imperative trumpets call out all his subjects into 
the field of war with sin and death and hell. He is 
so good, so capable; we are so narrow, so blind, so 
tempted, so unfit to have our own way; it is mat- 
ter for profound satisfaction that he has chosen to 
include us within the mighty circumference of 
his sway. It is right. It is best for all parties. 
We ca7t be good subjects, and he is sure to be the 
best of masters. He always treats his subjects 
well — never asks of them anything beyond their 
ability; never asks what is not for their advan- 
tage; never is severer with them than is abso- 
lutely necessary; never keeps from them any 
favor that he can consistently grant. His great 
study, so to speak, is to be of service to them. 
Their cup, here and hereafter, shall have as 
much of sweet and as little of bitter as circum- 
stances will allow. Know him for the tenderest 
of monarchs that ever blazed on a throne. An- 
other so forbearing and placable never held the 
fates of men in his hands. And his government 



the: supreme government. 73 

is the only one for the support of which the sub- 
ject has absolutely nothing to pay. This King 
maintains his own royal state. His civil list 
never taxes you or me. We have but to admire, 
rejoice in, and take the benefit of a glory that 
costs us nothing. And it is vastly honorable to 
be a loyal subject of God. Perhaps the word 
subject has to our republican ears a somewhat 
unpleasant sound; but to be the leal-hearted sub- 
jects of such a magnificent and wondrous empire 
as that of Jehovah is really a higher honor than to 
stand at the head of any earthly kingdom. Hearty 
service of God is liberty itself. We have angels 
and archangels for companions in it. The loyal 
subject, by virtue of that very character, becomes 
a son of God and heir of heavenly kingdoms; and 
if you can estimate the loftiness of such a summit 
as that you can do more than Paul supposed pos- 
sible to himself No arrow was ever shot at so 
high a mark. No thought of man ever went so 
far heavenward. 

And yet, alas, man is naturally an insubordi- 
nate subject. Though his subjection to God is 
righteous, tenderly enforced, and highly honor- 
able, he does not relish it. He does no little to 
cast it oiT. Sometimes he flatly and fiercely re- 
fuses it. He always neglects it — always thinks 
of God and his grovernment as little as may be. 



74 'I'HK SUPREME THINGS. 

Instead of giving complete homage and service, 
he gives none at all, save what is purely involun- 
tary. Instead of battling against sin, conscripted 
soldier as he is for that very purpose, all his 
battling is in sin's favor. Not one stricken field, 
not one fortress, not one standard, not one little 
spear even, of the enemy has he mastered or 
heartily attempted to master. He is a subject of 
the great King— but an unwilling and disloyal 
one. lie is under the all-encompassing govern- 
ment, and cannot get from nnder it: but he does 
not go and come, do and undo, as it directs. Per- 
haps he hates it, rails at it, shoots an arrow at it, 
goes against it at full charge and with levelled 
spear. There always have been and still are 
some such awful persons. But most natural men 
are not of this infatuated sort, but of the sort who 
quietly neglect their duty as subjects. They do 
not mean everlasting defiance, or even everlasting 
neglect, of God. They only mean postponement. 
They intend that the great government shall not 
always be overlooked. Shortly, or at least at 
some time, its smallest pointings shall be attended 
to as well as its loudest commands. Such is their 
vague or distinct purpose. And yet at this pres- 
ent the mildest name for them is insubordinate 
and disloyal subjects. 

And so it becomes necessary for men to be 



THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT. 75 

threatened and disciplined subjects. Insubordina- 
tion and disloyalty under any monarchy that 
means to stand cannot be permanently allowed. 
It is of too much consequence that the sovereign 
authority of God should be upheld, for him to 
allow his wayward subjects to maintain their 
waywardness. With all his tenderness and mer- 
cifulness, he does not allow it. Because he is 
tender and wise he does not allow it. He is 
obliged to speak sternly and warn of grave conse- 
quences. Unwillingly he points the fractious to 
the prisons of his empire — unwillingly he partly 
draws from its scabbard the sword of the magis- 
trate, that something of its terrible gleam may 
come to the eye of the hardened and hardening 
offender. Why will not men put their faces close 
to the Scriptures? There, any day they choose, 
they may see a hand such as pointed out doom to 
Belsha^zar pointing along the downward path 
before them; and following the direction with 
their peering eyes, they may descry the wofulest 
penitentiary that ever threatened the malefactors 
of any kingdom. There, any day they choose, 
they may look up and see the white robes of the 
Most High changing to the harness of the war- 
rior; and that sword w^hich had hung scabbarded 
at his side, as if a mere symbol, beginning to 
show itself beneath the knotted fingers of a giant. 



76 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

God sends these apparitions as so many conserva- 
tive warnings. Meanwhile he sends messengers, 
some of them with pleasant faces and pleading 
lips, and some with stern features and thonged 
hands (men call them trials) to keep, if possible, 
the matter from coming to the dreadful extremity 
of the prison and the sword. That disloyal sub- 
ject, by some means, must become loyal; and by 
the pain of present sorrow and the fear of future 
ill must be trained out of his evil ways and heart. 
This is the secret of the hardships and appeals 
that men are now having from God their King — 
this the reason of the visions they get from the 
high places of Scripture of penalties and pains 
almost too burdensome for human speech. 



Tl. 



V. 



Tte kpreme Institution. 



THE CHURCH. 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 79 



V. THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 

There never has been a time within the 
knowledge of profane history when all men have 
been under the same civil government. Even 
tradition fails to speak of a time when the race 
was not already broken up into many distinct 
peoples, each wuth its own centre of authority 
and political organization. Assyrians, Babylo- 
nians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greek, Romans — 
so run ancient history and tradition, far back 
into the twilight of conjecture and the night of 
fable. English, French, German, Russian, 
American — so runs the history of modern times. 
Historically, nations belong to the permanent 
order of the world. If we ask for the souire of 
this separation of the race into distinct nations, 
wx have a variety of answers. One traces it back 
to several distinct centres of creation. Another 
tells us of the ambition of rival leaders, of vari- 
eties of religion, of differences of climate and usa- 
ges and language. Still another contents him- 
self with saying that it is as natural for human- 
ity to break up into various nuclei as it would be 
for a Fire-Mist, bent on evolution, to separate and 
condense into separate worlds under the laws of 



80 * THE SUPREME THINGS. 

gravity, motion, and heat. But one who allows 
himself to be taught by the Bible gives another 
account. Once men were all of one language and 
one nationality. While in this state of unity 
they undertook to build a city and heaven-high 
tower in a spirit of pride and rebellion against 
God. Then God confounded their speech. He 
turned their one language into many languages, 
so that large numbers of people could not under- 
stand what other large numbers said. Those 
able to understand one another naturally drew 
together. Thus the original population was 
broken up; the parts gradually drifted away from 
the original seat into surrounding countries — 
countries in many instances parted by natural 
boundaries, possessing different climates and soils, 
and suggesting different modes of life. Under 
these circumstances the original division became 
confirmed and widened. When the settlement 
of the earth had proceeded to a certain extent, 
there came in another cause of separation, vi^., 
extent of territory. Overgrown states fall to 
pieces by their own weight. Convenience, econ- 
omy, and strength of government cannot be easily 
maintained beyond a certain distance from the 
central power. No human government could, in 
the present state of human nature, efficiently 
take charge of a world as large as ours. 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 8l 

But the size of the world, the physical differ- 
ences of its various lands, and that early confusion 
of tongues — three things that invited a variety of 
nationalities and certainly began and sustained 
it — were immediately from God. As says the 
Bible: ''He separated the sons of Adam." Just 
as He has set the heavenly bodies into distinct 
groups and clusters of groups, a system here and 
a system there, and made each system to have its 
own centre of revolution, so he has set mankind 
into nations and given to each its own sphere 
and function in the economy of the world. 
Separate nations are as really a divine insti- 
tution as are separate planets. Separation does 
not necessitate discord; it is often the condition 
of concord. As families can live harmoniously 
in the same community, and all the more har- 
moniously because they dwell apart: as the 
planets never collide, but make one balanced 
system that can stand for ever, so it may be with 
nations. Great as have been the troubles between 
nations, they have never been as great as their 
domestic troubles. Civil wars are the worst of 
all wars. 

One nation is large, another small. One is 
set down in Asia, another in America. One em- 
browns under tropical suns, another under arctic. 
One has an ocean for a boundary, another a 

Supreme Things.. 6 



82 THi; SUPREME THINGS. 

range of mountains, another a river, another an 
air line. How came the peoples by these dif- 
ferent conditions and inheritances? Was it by 
chance ? Did pure geography and physiology and 
ethnology settle the matter? We have a\etter 
philosophy than that, and we have it in these 
Scripture words: "When the Most High divided 
to the nations their inheritance He set the 
bounds of the people. " So it was God who sent 
Ham to Africa and Japhet to Europe— God who 
gave the Egyptian to his Nile, the Arab to his 
desert, the Hindoo to his jungle, the Scythian to 
his steppe, the Briton to his island, the Swiss to 
his mountains, the Russian to his snows, and the 
American to his new world. That the Chinese 
number some hundreds of millions and the Sand- 
wich Islanders some tens of thousands; that the 
Belgians have so narrow a home while the Amer- 
icans have one that is enormous; that we for the 
present stop at the Rio Grande and the St. Law- 
rence, the Italian at the Alps, and the Dane at 
the Baltic— all such matters are settled for us 
above. The bounds of to-day are not the bounds 
of yesterday; great nations become small and 
small nations become great; change is the law of 
states as well as of individuals: and what shall 
we say? That war has done it, or the treaty, or 
political sagacity, or the genius of luck ? Let us 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 83 

ther say as does the Bible: ''''He putteth down 
one and setteth np another. He increaseth the 
nations and destroyeth them. He enlargeth the 
nations and straiteneth them again." The 
Lord most high presides in all the issues of war 
and diplomacy; his hand lies concealed in all 
battles and policies; he is governor among the 
nations even while they suppose that some Napo- 
leon is governing them, or that they are govern- 
ing themselves. They propose and God disposes. 
It would do some politicians (and not a few) great 
good could they see how their schemes and doings 
are accepted or rejected, sifted or modified^ swept 
along or swept away, by a masierful Providence. 
It would be well if our historians and students of 
history, and makers and readers of newspapers, 
could see in national events something besides 
the generals that fight, the statesmen that plot, 
and the people that sometimes obey and some- 
times rebel and always suffer — even God Al- 
mighty, who never has been willing, and never 
will be willing, to leave the world to the tender 
mercies of kings and parliaments, of presidents 
and congresses. 

For what purpose does God thus deal w^ith 
nations ? If he divides to them their inheritance, 
and sets bounds to the peoples in all their wide 
dispersions and fluctuations, it is ''according to 



84 "THE SUPREME THINGS. 

the number of the children of Israel." That is, 
he distributes and regulates the nations in the 
interest of his church. He orders public affairs 
as the welfare of religion demands. He expands 
and contracts, raises and depresses, sets up and 
sets aside, not out of an aimless autocracy, not 
out of a selfish personal ambition, not out of a 
weak favoritism for this man or that people, but 
out of a w4se regard to what will be best for the 
kingdom of truth and righteousness among men. 
The case is just after this manner. It is as if, 
at the beginning, God selected the choicest land 
under the sun, considered what part of it would 
be best for his people, established them in it, and 
then set down the nations around them as was 
best suited to promote the safety and profit of the 
central treasure— Edom here, Moab there, Amalek 
yonder, the Assyrian to the east, the Greek and 
Roman to the west, and so on to the world's end. 
He saw that, all things considered, Palestine, a 
land flowing w^ith milk and honey, was the best 
of all lands for an infant and adolescent church. 
The church, therefore, was planted there under 
the name of Israel. And the whole world of that 
day was laid out from that centre: distances were 
reckoned from that; bearings were taken from 
that. Babylon w^as in such a direction and so 
many miles from Jerusalem. Tyre took her seat 



«i 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 85 

on the waters, and Rome her seat on the seven 
;hills, because of Jerusalem. And the Most High 
^wiped out boundaries and made new ones; estab- 
lished and suppressed and translated states from 
time to time as the interests of Jerusalem de- 
manded. This means that God manaofed the 
Gentile peoples in all respects in the interest of 
his Old Testament church and the one true 
religion for which it stood. It was because Israel 
stood for the one true religion that it was thus 
made the pivot of ancient history. 

And when that old church was enlarged and 
beautified into the New Testament and Christian 
church which gathers equally from all nations, 
did it lose its pivotal character, and instead of 
having the world's majesties and empires con- 
tinue to revolve about it, as they had done from 
the beginning, did it become by God's will a 
mere satellite to them? God forbid. As Paul 
said to the Christians of his day, so let it be said 
to the Christians of all days: "All things are for 
your sakes." Present empires are the satellites 
of the present church. They reflect light upon 
it; they serve to keep its air and water pure; 
they wait upon and minister to its needs wherever 
it goes. Providence creates them, expands them, 
contracts them, gives them their great or small 
histories — all according as the welfare of ^ion 



86 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

requires. Take a map of the world as it was in 
the time of Christ, and when your finger has 
followed the frontiers of all the nations great and 
small, then say confidently to yourself, This map 
is such as I see it because yonder in Judsea lies 
the new kingdom of God in its cradle. Take 
a map of the world as it is to-day; count and 
bound all its countries — American, European, 
Asiatic, African, Oceanic; then say confidently 
to yourself. This map is such as it is, and all 
these nations have such proportions and history 
as these bounding lines express, because yonder 
marches with banners and panoply and exultant 
music the growing kingdom of God in the world. 
Comparing the two maps, what vast reconstruc- 
tions of the nations have these eighteen centuries 
seen ! This deluge of public change, say confi- 
dently to yourself, means nothing more nor less 
than the discipline and education and setting | 
forward in the world of the young cause of Christ 
as organized in his church. God sees his church ^ 
in everything. He is determined to keep it as 
the apple of his eye. He has graven its palatial 
and castellated picture on the palms of his hands 
so that its walls may be continually before him; 
and day and night he rules in the kingdoms and j 
saith among the nations. The Lord reigneth^ in or- 
der that he may make those walls salvation and 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 87 

those gates praise. His providence among men 
has ever kept steady eye on this goal as, now 
with flashing wheels and now with wheels that 
almost sleep, it has moved along the world's 
highway through statecraft and war and peace 
and inventions and civilizations — shaping all and 
guiding all so that the ancient word might be ful- 
filled which declares that when the Most High 
divided to the nations their inheritance, when 
he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds 
of the people according to the number of the 
children of Israel. Let the truth be known by 
princes and presidents, by captains and cabinets, 
by parliaments and parties, by historians and 
journalists, and by all whom it may concern — 
the key to providence is the church of Jesus 
Christ; and the keynote to all sounds in high 
places and low, in this country and in that, the 
world over, is that which Zion gives forth as her 
stones are being laid with fair colors and her 
foundations with sapphires, as her windows are 
being made of agates and her gates of carbuncles 
and all her borders of pleasant stones. 

When we speak of all the providential ar- 
rangements of the world, even the largest and 
such as relate to the broadest and most populous 
empires, as being made with supreme reference 
to the interests of the church, some one may 



88 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

begin to question within himself as to what these 
interests are. Say its safety: no enemy must be 
allowed to destroy it by force or craft. Say its 
purity: it must be kept as pure as possible from 
worldly men and measures, from errors of doc- 
trine and corruptions of practice. Say its enlarge- 
ment: it must, as far and fast as may be, grow in 
numbers and graces, make proselytes from a 
wicked world and sanctify them, gain w^arm 
friends and many of them. Say its union: it 
must be drawn as powerfully as possible to a ful- 
filment of Jesus' prayer that '^ they may be one, 
even as we are one;" so that all evangelical 
denominations, instead of wasting their energies 
in mutual conflicts, may freely cooperate as differ- 
ent battalions of the same army for the salvation 
of men and the glory of God. Safety, purity, 
growth, and unity — these are the four great inter- 
ests of the church which are so precious in the 
sight of heaven that the Babylons and Romes and 
Londons of the world, with all their stately cor- 
teges of provinces and states, are made mere moons 
to them, to revolve about them, dignify them, 
and give them light. What care national leaders 
in too many instances for anything but them- 
selves ! How selfishly stalk the ambitions and 
passions of public men across their conspicuous 
stage, without even a glance at our Jerusalem, 



THK SUPREMK INSTITUTION. 89 

ithout even a thought of protecting it or purify- 
ing it or enlarging it or unifying it. And yet, 
so wills the great Statesman who manages from 
above, these blind sailors steer straight into his 
port, these blind marksmen hit his mark between 
wind and water. Though they mean it not, 
though they aim at something quite different, 
things so come about that their measures protect 
and promote Zion as much as if they had form- 
ally set themselves to do so. The currents and 
under-currents and counter-currents of a mana- 
ging providence so distribute their forces on the 
schemes and efforts of vanity and selfishness that 
are launched from thrones and cabinets and legis- 
latures that they become mere tugs and tenders 
to help the divine ship towards its proper port. 

All things work together for good to the indi- 
vidual Christian. This is true as Scripture. 
But the Christian knows it by faith and not by 
sight. From the beginning till now no man has 
been able to see that the final outcome of what- 
ever befalls him will be to his advantage. What 
he sees is an event with an endless chain of 
sequences, some of which seem favorable to him 
and others unfavorable. But things are not 
always what they seem. Apparent prosperity 
often becomes after a little apparent adversity; 
apparent adversity after a little apparent prosper- 



90 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

ity. But even if it were not so, and we could 
rely on first appearances, mere science would still 
find it impossible to say whether, in so long a 
series, the ayes or noes will finally prevail. 
"Count no man happy till he is dead," cries an 
old writer; which means that it is impossible to 
tell what the whole bearing of any given event 
on a man's interest will be till the series of rip- 
pies which it starts has come to au end. But in 
the case of an immortal being this series never 
comes to an end. Hence God alone can tell us 
what the resultant of any event will be. He 
alone can say whether the ayes or the noes will 
have it. And he assures the Christian that in 
his case the ayes shall always prevail. This 
explicit assurance is what the Christian builds 
on, not what his own eyes can discover. 

The church has a like assurance. All things 
shall work for her good— all social changes, all 
political movements, all literary and scientific 
flows and ebbs; in short, every event whatever. 
We cannot prove this by observation; we take it 
on the testimony of Him who sees the end from 
the beginning, and who indeed is able to make 
the end he desires. From merely what we see 
we could not satisfy ourselves that the church is 
the centre of the nations and that Providence is 
marshalling all earthly events with supreme refer- 



I 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 9I 

ence to her advantage; we take it on the voucher 
of a divine witness. It is wholly a matter of 
faith. None the worse for that. The testimony 
of God is quite as good as our eyes. Nay, it is as 
much better as the eyes of God are better than 
our own. 

Men propose, but God disposes. Statesmen 
and parties and politicians go their various ways, 
as ambition or greed or convenience may move, 
but in time they are all brought around to his 
goal. Nothing can prevent it. An unseen track 
is under all the locomotives of the world as they 
rush on through the darkness, and they are sure 
to come at last where God wants them. And that 
is where it will be best for the church of Christ 
to have them. This is a cheerful doctrine. It is 
a good thing to have at hand when the political 
heavens have a bad look about them. When 
bad rulers come to power and bad laws are made, 
and armies and statecrafts defy all the Ten Com- 
mandments; in short, when the politicians do not 
need to wear veils over their faces to protect the 
eyes of spectators, we need not go into despair or 
despondency about the cause. God has not abdi- 
cated in favor of Caesar or Parliament or Bourse 
or even that other god called the Laws of Nature. 
What will turn up next we do not know, but we 
do know what will turn up last — safety and vie- 



93 the: supreme things. 

tdry. Shall the sailor when the wind is high 
find courage in the thought that his veteran pilot 
has never yet failed to bring his ship into port? 
Shall the soldier as he faces the enemy take com- 
fort in the fact that he is led by a general who 
has fought a hundred times and never lost a bat- 
tle? Much more shall the Christian take com- 
fort when the ship of the church is seen laboring 
in heavy seas, when the army of the Lord is pit- 
ted against principalities and powers of evil. Let 
him set his heart quite at rest. The flag-ship of 
the great Admiral is not going down, the house- 
hold troops of the great Commander will not be 
broken up. Despite all croakings and all sneer- 
ings, things will come out right at last. Is not 
Zion graven on the palms of His hands, and are 
not her walls continually before him? 

It is a great privilege to do our sailing in a 
ship that has God for its Pilot — to do our fighting 
in an army that has God for its Commander. 
The sailing and the fighting have to be done. It 
is merely a question of under what auspices they 
shall be done. To belong to a cause and institu- 
tion which God himself established, which he 
holds as the apple of his eye, and to which all the 
nations are mere satellites, and especially to hold 
official position in such an institution, is a greater 
honor than to be enrolled in any guild of honor 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 93 

to which worldly ambition aspires. Knights of 
the Bath, commanders of the Golden Fleece, 
members of the Legion of Honor: let those have 
such dignities who w^ant them and are worthy of 
them. As for me and my house, we choose a 
higher distinction. We choose to be sons of God, 
children of the covenant, a chosen generation, a 
royal priesthood, a holy nation, partners in that 
great institution which is the body of Christ and 
in the interest of which the Most High manages 
the nations. This institution, all other insti- 
tutions above, we take for our palace-home. 
There is nothing like being a worthy member of 
the church of Christ. Unworthy membership is 
bad in anything — is not real membership at all. 
To be really part and parcel of the visible king- 
dom of God in the world, in loving harmony with 
it, acting for it, and bound to share its divinely- 
cared-for fortunes here and hereafter, there is 
nothing better for a man beneath the stars or 
above them. That this is not the feeling of 
many is plain enough; but it is equally plain 
that theirs is a case of serious blindness. The 
god of this world has blinded the minds of them 
that believe not. But the great Oculist has be- 
friended some of ns, and our eyes have been 
opened to see greatness where others see little- 
ness, and glory where others see only shame — to 



94 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

see in the humblest believer a corporate member 
of the noblest institution on earth, a member of a 
peerage that in the court of heaven takes prece- 
dence of all other peerages, and will never be 
disturbed by the triumphs of any democracy 
Daughters of the King ! Sons of the Kino- 1 Of 
course something of the King's honor i^ upon 
them. 

All ways do not lead to Rome, nor should 
they. All ways do lead to Jerusalem-at least all 
God's ways— and so they should. It is there lie 
the supreme interests of the world. This is the 
reason why God acts as he does; and is it not a 
sufficient reason why all Christians should go and 
do likewise ? Even as he, in dealing with the 
affairs of the world, makes them all (whether 
sun, moon, or eleven stars), bend low before his 
church, so should not all his disciples, in their 
dealings with worldly matters of whatever grade, 
dominate everything with the thought of what 
will be for the interest of Zion ? Our Pilgrim 
Fathers said, Yes, and practised it. Church in- 
terests were made the dominant interests in every 
community they founded. Neither the farm nor 
the factory nor the town-house was the visible 
centre of their revolution; they administered their 
homes, they administered their business, they 
administered their politics even, as they thought 



THE SUPREME INSTITUTION. 95 

the welfare of religion demanded. And to them 
the visible representative of religion was the 
church on the hill. 

In these days, however, not a few allow 
themselves to live on a different plan, to subor- 
dinate church interests to their private secular 
ones. Zion gets what time and strength are left 
after the world has satisfied itself. The world as 
master sits down to the table first; and if some 
crumbs happen to escape its hungry jaws, the 
church as servant may have them. This order 
of things is unsatisfactory. It is neither after 
the manner of the fathers nor after the manner of 
God, whose motto in dealing with the world has 
ever been. According to the number of the childi^en 
of Israel, Our conduct among the secularities of 
life should copy the divine example. It should 
recognize the supreme importance of the king- 
dom of God. And doing this need no more 
interfere with the successful conduct of business 
than the revolution of the moon about the sun 
interferes with its revolution about the earth. 
We have many brilliant examples of business 
men who have not gone to pieces because they 
have put all their business movements under the 
presidency of a supreme regard to the interests 
of the cause of Christ, 



VI. 



. Tlie Supreme EyiL 



* 



SIN. 



THE SUPREME EVII.. 99 



VI. THE SUPREME EVIL. 

I AM to give some account of Sin. The mon- 
ster to whom this name belongs needs no intro- 
duction to any. Where is the man who has not 
seen it, and dealt with it, and lived in the same 
house with it, ever since he has lived at all ? 

This universal acquaintance of ours is not, 
like God, self-existent and eternal. There was a 
time when it was not; when perfect holiness 
reigned everywhere in the universe. Then came 
a time when it was. How shall we account for 
this terrible birth? Was it a spontaneous gen- 
eration ? Science being witness, there never has 
been such a thing. Was God the father of it? 
He is a bold man who dares say. Yes; bolder, I 
hope, than any of us. We do not care to blas- 
pheme. 

How then did sin come into being? 

I do not propose to offer an answer to this 
question. Not that it is not a lawful question, 
and under certain circumstances a useful one; 
but that to attempt an answer would not suit my 
present purpose. Those who are curious about 
the matter, and love deep speculations and have 
plenty of time on their hands, can consult the 



lOO THE SUPREME THINGS. 

many books which have been written on the ori- 
gin of moral evil. It is enough for our purpose 
to know that somehow sin had a beginning, and 
that when it began it had neither necessity nor 
God for its father. 

And yet the birthplace of sin was heaven. 
Many thousand years ago — we know not how 
many— it sprang into being suddenly in the im- 
mediate presence of God. Strange to say, and 
dreadful to think of, on one of those bright days 
such as only heaven knows, the ugliest monster 
that ever saw the light in this world or any other 
was seen walking the streets of the Golden City, 
and beating with wing black as midnight the 
pure air of the Cloudless Land: and lo, many an 
angel, and at least one prince of angels, following 
obediently in its train. Behold a host ! — a host 
but just now bowing before the throne, delight- 
fully singing, gloriously shining, rejoicing beyond 
measure in their liberty of perfect obedience. O 
Lucifer, son of the morning, how art thou fallen ! 
In thy fall thou hast dragged with thee the third 
part of the stars of heaven ! How aghast the 
faithful angels must have stood at the mighty 
defection in their ranks ! To think that such be- 
ings in such a place should turn rebels ! See that 
the greatest faculties and fairest circumstances 
are no security against sin and the greatest prac- 



THE SUPREME EVIL. lOI 

tical folly. What man in respect to keen and 
large intelligence can compare with those sinning 
angels? Whose surroundings could do more to- 
wards excluding sin and darkness of all sorts than 
those that belonged to Satan while as yet he was 
not Satan? '' I^et him that thinketh he standeth 
take heed lest he fall. ' ' Are you so clear-minded 
and strong, so pillared and citadeled by happy 
circumstances, that you will not fall under the 
sin that has subdued your neighbor? Remember 
that the first seat of sin was heaven, the first vic- 
tims of it the glorious angels. 

Sin was born in heaven; but, from the nature 
of the case, it could not continue there. '^I be- 
held Satan falling as light from heaven." The 
holy place promptly spewed out its filth. Every 
golden palace that held a sinner was emptied; 
every golden harp wont to be grasped by what 
was now a guilty hand lost its master. Battles 
blazed. Michael fought, and his angels; Satan, 
and his. Then a dreadful defeat. Terror-smitten, 
lightning-scarred, legion after legion of spirits 
went plunging through wide open gates into the 
abyss. Not a single rebel was left w^ithin, to 
show, among those w^ho walk in white, his spot- 
ted garments. And their place was no more 
found in heaven. Of all the guilty host not one 
ever made his way back; no, not for an hour. 



I02 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

And if God would not allow a solitary sinning 
angel to remain in heaven, he certainly will not 
allow a solitary sinning man to enter there in 
company with his sins. If he would not allow 
the sinner native to glory to return to it, he will 
not allow a sinner alien to glory by birth and life 
to win it while yet a sinner. We must have a 
reo^eneration. Our characters must be altoo^ether 
made over. Before the ministering angels con- 
duct any one of us across that beaming threshold 
from which Satan and his companions were 
hurled, all the sin within him must have van- 
ished. 

The next seat of sin was far away. *'God 
spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them 
down to hell." Of this fiery world exiled sin 
took full possession. For the first time in its 
history it had a home. In heaven it was an in- 
truder : on these plagued and blasted plains it 
was perpetual dweller and sovereign. From 
blazing rampart to blazing rampart the mighty 
furnace was all its own. And there it built its 
metropolis, and forged everlasting chains of dark- 
ness, and tormented fallen cherub and seraph to 
its bitter content. There it bade them lie in 
oceans of sorrow, contrasting the present with the 
past, looking bitterly away towards the far-beam- 
ing gates they were never to enter more, looking 



THE SUPREME EVII.. 103 

down the endless abysses of a hopeless future. 
There the monster grew hideous, and still more 
hideous, for we know not how long— contend- 
ing, hating, blaspheming, plotting how to break 
prison. In the view of God that awful prison 
was its own proper place. He thought it just 
fitted to the evil nature of sin. Its nature is so 
deadly as to call for '^ bottomless pits'' and 
'4akesoffire" and '' undying worms.'' Noth- 
ing is so bad as sin, for God has prepared for it 
the worst place in all the universe. 

Shall I then cling to it as if parting with it 
were parting with my life ? Shall I try all man- 
ner of excuses and devices for the privilege of 
keeping it with me a little longer? Shall I press 
my lips to it as if it were sweet-faced and sweet- 
breathed righteousness itself? If God had built 
for the home of sin some world of exquisite ala- 
baster, some copy of heaven, only just a little 
faded, then, looking away to its gleaming domes 
and palaces, I might infer that sin is not so bad a 
thing as some men say. But since he has built 
for it the prison of brimstone and fire and dark- 
ness, I am bound to infer that with him sin is an 
abominable thing, and that it should be the same 
with ns. 

From the bitter world of hell sin, after a while, 
succeeded in effecting an entrance into our own; 



I04 



THE SUPREME THINGS. 



shall I not say only our own ? There is no evi- 
dence that of all the countless worlds any other 
than our own little planet has ever been afflicted 
with the presence of the monster. On the con- 
trary, the fact of Christ's death among us seems 
to show that the earth is alone in this disaster. 
Such a loneliness every good man could not but 
rejoice in. It were a poor satisfaction to him 
to know that constellation after constellation has 
been laid waste by the same grim invader that 
has wasted us. It would be an immense satisfac- 
tion to him to know that, aside from the place of 
punishment, there is only one little desert in all 
the wide universe, and that not an irreclaima- 
ble desert; that the government of God is far from 
being that failure which it sometimes seems to 
unbelief when looking over the guilt and wretch- 
edness of this little globe. What is one speck on 
the great white flag of an empire ? What is one 
grain of black sand on the white beach of a con- 
tinent? Were an earthly king to find disaffection 
within his realm only in the proportion in which, 
as we cannot but hope, God finds it in his, it 
would scarcely cost him one anxious thought. 
Shall he be alarmed because a solitary mote in 
the sunbeam presumes to cast a shadow ? I trust 
that under the government of God sinners are al- 
most infinitely in the minority. Still it is a 



THE SUPREME EVII.. 105 

mournful thing that sin ever succeeded in getting 
any foothold whatever, even in so inconsiderable 
a bit of the creation as that we occupy . That 
was an evil day for us, the most evil that ever 
dawned, when the monster of monsters broke 
ioose from its prison and came flying between us 
and the sun. 

The enemy entered our house without knock- 
ing. In the form of a serpent it crept to the 
cradle. It struck its fang into the infant human- 
I ity that was lying there, and poisoned all its 
' blood. The virus struck at once to the very 
1 centre, and laid hold, like a giant, of core and 
' marrow, of body and soul, of intellect and will 
and heart. Straightway Paradise ceased. Its 
flowers withered. Thorns and briers started up. 
Life became a labor. Children were troublously 
I born into trouble. x\nd the new grand organ 
which God had set up in this earth-temple of his 
to sound his praises, from that time had Satan for 
organist, and went on playing a strange, wailing, 
infatuated measure, full of discords, wounding the 
ear of the listener as with swords. 

After sin had obtained footing in the infant 
w^orld, how far did it carry its influence over 
individuals and society ? It subjugated all men, 
and subjugated each man totally. Never was 
there a more complete passing under the yoke. 



io6 thje: supre:me: things. 

The tyrant clutched every little child, put an 
iron collar about its neck, and said Mine. It 
clutched every race, nation, tribe, profession, 
every palace and hovel, every C3esar and beggar, 
every sage and every fool, and said Mine. It said 
to every fresh life, '%ove not God; trust him 
not; exclude him from the heart and thought as 
much as possible;" and without fail came back 
the slavish answer, ''I will." It said to every 
fresh life, '^Do nothing for the purpose of pleas- 
ing God; nothing because he wills it; nothing, in 
fact, that has any moral goodness in it;" and 
without fail the bond slave made answer, ''I 
obey." Wherever man went forth, sin went as 
his companion. Went he to live amid northern 
rigors ? sin was not afraid of snows and glaciers 
and arctic blasts, and kept by him still. Spread 
he to the south among tropic heats ? sin was not 
afraid of sultriness and fever and dusky skin, and 
kept by him still. If he built a house, dug in the 
field, hunted in the wood, sin built, dug, and 
hunted by his side like his shadow. 

Wonderful success this ! It is a formidable 
and humiliating fact to think of: every man a 
sinner, and every sinner thoroughly so by nature, 
quite up to the present time. Who, with the 
name of man upon him, has a right to be proud ? 
What a great work it must be to break down 



THE SUPREME EVIL. 107 

such a wide and deeply founded kingdom as that 
which sin has established among us ! No one 
need be surprised to find it broken slowly and 
with difficulty, even by the divine forces of Chris- 
tianity. And let every one feel that the work to 
be done within himself is very great; that so rad- 
ical a perversion of his nature calls for strong 
remedies and a diligent use of them. lyCt him 
ask if a divine power is not needed to work in 
him while he is working out his salvation with 
fear and trembling. 

Though sin has prevailed over all men, and 
so is the greatest conqueror known to history, it 
has had far greater success among some classes 
than among others. The extremes of society 
have generally been the most sinful. On the one 
hand, the rich, the honored, the powerful, have 
outdone the middle classes in sinful indulo:ence 
in proportion as they have exceeded them in the 
means of such indulgence. On the other hand, 
the most ignorant, destitute, and neglected part 
of mankind have outdone the middle classes in 
all low vice in proportion as their restraints and 
cultures have been less. Princes and aristocra- 
cies have been loose, luxurious, rapacious, and 
oppressive: peasants, serfs, dependents have been 
deceitful, sensual, grovelling, brutal, and have 
filled the prisons with criminals. The extremes 



loS THK supre:me things. 

have met on about the same level. On the 
mountain-top is a plague of cold; at the mount- 
ain foot is the plague of heat; it is the temperate 
middle region that is most desirable. If history 
is allowed to teach us, a land divided between 
nobles and slaves, between those who have every- 
thing and those who have nothing, is as odious 
to good morals as it is to enlightened politics. 
The lesson is such as may well reconcile to their 
state those who occupy that middle condition in 
life which Agur prayed for as the most friendly 
to virtue. How many have grown fat on the 
earth merely to pollute it and themselves and 
ruin their families ! They have coveted and 
grasped and acquired; they have turned their 
backs on God in their eagerness to embrace the 
world; and when at last they glitter in pride and 
luxury their hearts are hard as flint, and their 
children turn drones and spendthrifts and sen- 
sualists, pests of society and outcasts from God. 
The man who is having what the world calls 
great prosperity must have great help from God, 
or he will be a great sinner. He needs to have' 
all his friends pray and watch for him, as if his 
feet were among pits. The man who is sunk in 
neglect and destitution, with little knowledge and 
much temptation, with few to care for him and 
many to repel him, must have great help from 



THE SUPREME EVIL. 109 

God, or he will be a great sinner. He needs the 
sympathies and apprehensions of his fellow-crea- 
tures about as much as kings and millionaires 
do. By different gates he and they have come 
out on a common level of special temptation and 
exposure. 

On looking again at the history of sin in 
-the world, w^e notice that it has taken differ- 
ent forms according to the different classes and 
spheres to which it would suit itself. The lead- 
ing sins of the young are apt to root them- 
selves in heedlessness, levity, impatience of au- 
thority, love of pleasure. The middle-aged are 
prone to selfish ambitions, contentions, intense 
worldliness. The aged tend to peevishness, cen- 
soriousness, and coldness of heart. Thus every 
sphere has its own favorite variety of sin. In 
this locality the night-shade best flourishes. In 
another the upas takes to the soil most kindly. 
This low ground is the natural home of the fever, 
and that raw coast of the consumption. From 
this stony hillside naturally comes out one sort 
of hissing serpent, from this mouldy swamp 
another, from this dense wood another. The 
white bear is native to arctic icefields, and the 
ferocious tiger to the tropic jungle. So every 
condition in life naturally favors some sins more 
than others. Poisonous plants, dangerous dis- 



no THE SUPREME THINGS. 

eases, venomous serpents, great and fierce beasts 
of prey, are they all; capable of acclimation in 
all places, but some to be looked for in greatest 
thrift and force here, and others in greatest force 
there. 

Then comes the question properly to each of 
us: ''While I am exposed somewhat to many 
forms of sin, what forms are those most natural 
to my heart and to my time and condition of life? 
What sort of tares is my field most apt at pro- 
ducing? What sort of monster does my jungle 
or fen or desert or icefield most incline to har- 
bor?' ' Surely this is a prudent question; nor is 
it one very hard to answer if one is really con- 
cerned to know. He faithfully opens eye on 
himself, and lo ! it appears that pride is one of his 
great mastering specialties. Another looks and 
finds censoriousness and envy growing thriftily 
in his heart, as if in native soil. What shall I do 
with this covetousness, this hatred, this fear of 
man, or this disingenuousness, which, on close 
inquiry, I find is my great trouble? 

When we have discovered what our chief foes 
are, then we are to bring to bear on them our 
chief watch and strength. Why does the general 
draw up his best troops and heaviest artillery on 
his extreme right? and why, when the battle is 
raging, turn eye more frequently and anxiously 



THK stpre;me; £:vii.. hi 

towards that point than any other? It is because 
there his position is least defensible by nature 
and there the enemy musters his most skilful 
captains and choicest battalions. He does 
not forget that he has enemies in other parts 
of the field; but that point yonder, where 
march the scarred veterans of Servia and full 
two-thirds of the whole hostile ordnance, it is 
that on which he w411 bring his best energies to 
bean If he conq^uers at that worst beset point, he 
conquers at every other. So Murat sweeps down 
upon it at the head of the Old Guard, and the 
result is Austerlitz. With like wise tactics we 
must lay out our chief vigilance and strength 
against our chief sins and temptations. 

Wherever sin has been in the w^orld it has 
left deep marks of itself. A giant does not walk 
on the sands without leaving formidable foot- 
prints. The plague does not go riding on its pale 
horse through London without leaving behind 
empty homes and full cemeteries. War does not 
sweep across a country without leaving harvests 
trampled and foraged into ruin, villages and 
cities in flames, and fields red w^th blood. And 
sin, giant, and plague and war all in one, has not 
gone the wide world over, trampling, trampling 
with its iron heel, without leaving many plain 
marks of its direful journey. 



1 



112 THE SUPREME THINGS. 



I see a paradise fading away into a desert I 
see the ground cursed into toughness, barren- 
ness, or thorns. I see immortal man hunted by- 
diseases and slain by death. I see him born with 
a corrupt nature, perpetually harassed by con- 
science, beaten about on the ever-restless sea of 
his own or others' passions. Oh ! stand aghast, 
ye readers of history, at the great host of woes 
which sin has set marching across the theatre of 
all the ages: the oppressions, the famines, the 
wars, the pestilences, the tears, the groans, the 
toils, the disappointments, the bitter things as 
many as the sand on the seashore. 

And yet there is something worse than this. 
If sin had only withered the greenness of this 
world for all men, it might have been forgiven; 
but, not satisfied with such a vandalism as this, 
it sought to wither their eternal future. And it 
has succeeded in the case of but too many. What 
are the blight and ruin of the present compared 
with those of that future into which death has 
conducted so many? For six thousand years it 
has been binding and delivering over to Satan. 
And now the fearful, woful home of that great 
enemy is filled with the laments of perished souls 
for whom no more can be done. Oh, what deep 
footprints are these on the bleeding face of the 
past ! 



THE SUPREME EVII.. 113^ 

And the face of the present is also scarred 
and bleeding under the same iron heel. Circtim- 
spice. A near view has points of advantage; so 
let us look in our immediate neighborhood. 
Plainly sin is an awful evil-doer still. It has not 
changed its nature in favor of the last years of 
the nineteenth century. Does a poison ever be- 
come healthy food? Does a tiger ever become a 
lamb? Men sometimes get regenerated; sin and 
Satan never. So we find them still at their old 

j work of stirring up ill-blood between a man and 
his conscience, between man and his brother- 

I man, between man and his God. Sin fills us, 
as it did the fathers, with fears and tumults and 

, pangs of a thousand names. It wears away our 

i bodies and too often destroys our souls. It be- 
clouds our time, and, not seldom, makes pitchy 
night of our eternity. The old selfishness is yet 
pulling down the interests of many to make 
stepping-stones for the rising of one. The old 
hatred is still slandering the precious good name, 
and rejoicing to help on a misfortune. The old 
dishonesty is still robbing the rich of their riches 
and the poor of their bread. The old idleness is 
still sacrificing both earth and heaven. The old 
pride is still quarrelling with equals and riding 
roughly over inferiors. The old envy and jeal- 
ousy are still piercing the hearts that shelter 

Supreme Things. 3 



114 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

them, and thrusting with sharp red blade at other 
hearts. 

There are some things that mix good with 
,the evil they do. They are evil-doers and good- 
doers in the same breath — working mischief with 
the right hand and more or less advantage with 
the left. It is the bad distinction of sin to-day, 
as ever, that it is an evil-doer only. No better 
than our fathers are we able to trace home to it 
as natural parent a single real service to God or 
man. It is true we sometimes see it overruled 
for good ; but in all such cases it is a real over- 
ruling; the good is wrung and beaten and fought 
out by main strength. Of its own motion it 
•scatters never a flower or green leaf even — only 
firebrands, arrows, and death. 

And it is now, as ever, a further bad distinc- 
tion of sin among evil-doers that it keeps up its 
evil-doing incessantly. It does evil, it does great 
evil, it does evil only, it does evil always. Man 
w^orks his day out, and then rests till the east is 
gray again. The elements ferment and break 
out in tempests, and then all is quiet again. 
But sin is an insatiable worker, never stopping 
for drowsy night or tempestuous day, for pleasure 
of man or pleasure of God; raining its evil blows 
on body and soul without ceasing and without 
slacking. When is the enemy overtaken in the 



THE SUPREMK EVIL. 115 

act of sleep ? When is it seen ofF on furlough 
from its bitter trade? As poison works away in 
the body none the less because night draws her 
curtain over the sky and stretches the suicide on 
his bed in the stillness of sleep, so works away in 
the sinner the virus of evil ideas and habits 
whether he be waking or sleeping, at business or 
leisure, in company or solitude, in places profane 
or places sacred; never stopping absolutely for a 
single moment. In the individual and in society 
I at large we notice the same ceaseless activity. 
The night that locks your senses in sleep sees 
many another man wakeful over the plans or 
commissions of crime. While darkness in one 
neighborhood is filling all homes with midnight 
silence and inaction, in another the full day is 
noisy with labor and too often with laborious 
sin. Somewhere some crime is being committed 
every moment. At any moment all possible 
crimes are being committed somewhere in the 
world. Materials for ten thousand criminal ga- 
zettes are cast off at every tangent as this wicked 
world goes on its way. And after one has said 
that sin works evil, and great evil, and only 
evil, and evil always, he may go on to say that 
it works evil everywhere — everywhere in earth 
and hell, and, in a sense, in heaven too; for it 
robs heaven of many a citizen and many a song 



Il6 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

over the sinner that repenteth. It works its de- 
vastations where the sun rises and where it sets, 
w^here perpetual snows are piled and where tor- 
rid suns flame down on equatorial jungles. It 
walks the brown streets of cities and the green 
pastures of the country. It is the death's head in 
every select company, at every fireside, in every 
closet of prayer, and in every temple of religion. 

And we further notice that the evil connected 
with sin is not a mere incident of it, but belongs 
to its very nature and interest. It wounds and 
destroys because it means to wound and destroy — 
because this is its natural outcome, the only fruit 
which such a nature can bear. Its very essence 
and gravitation are to do harm. We are wont to 
make a broad distinction between persons who in 
passing along let fly some chance sparks of dan- 
ger and persons who are incendiaries by choice 
and profession, and cannot be content unless, 
with malice prepense, they are putting the torch 
to their neighbors' barns and homes. Sin is an 
evil-doer of the latter sort. What it does is just 
the natural, purposeful outbreak of its black, de- 
structive, incendiary nature. 

Such has sin been in the past. Such is it still. 
And now let us look from earth to heaven, and 
see how God feels towards this ancient and mod- 
ern monster. He hates it. He hates nothinof of 



THE supreme: evil. 117 

all that he has made ; neither man nor dragon 
nor demon even; but this one monster which he 
did not make he hates with all his infinite energy. 
''Oh, do not this abominable thing which I 
hate!" Nothing short of the vocabulary of hea- 
ven would sufl&ce to express the strength of God's 
feeling against this universal enemy. All his 
wrathful looks and words towards men are really 
directed not against men, but against men's sin. 
He makes no secret of his feeling. He blades and 
thunders it out for all to see and hear from both 
law and gospel. And it is a w^orking hostility. 
He fought it out of heaven; and he is now en- 
gaged in fighting it out of this world. When 
he made man he put within him a conscience to 
guard him against it altogether. He forbade him 
under penalty exceeding great to admit it into his 
little paradise. And when, notwithstanding all, 
the fall took place, he still kept up the contest: 
denouncing, legislating; sending angels, proph- 
ets, miracles, judgments, the Holy Ghost, Jesus 
Christ. His own Son was the consummation and 
flow^er of all the means by which God has warred 
on sin. What a loathing of it did the mighty 
sacrifice of the cross betoken ! What a wide door 
of escape for all of sin's bondsmen did it open! 
Yes, God has let loose retaliating hand as well as 
heart on the miscreant iniquity that has dared to 



Il8 THE SUPREME THINGS. 



lay waste this once fair province of his empire 
He hunts it always and everywhere. He inflicts 
on it all possible injury. He wages on it a w^ar 
that knows neither quarter nor truce — a war of 
extermination. If it is not yet exterminated it is 
not from any lack of active hostility against it on 
the part of heaven. 

Of course, the attitude of God towards sin has 
always been that of godly men. Against only 
one thing in the world have they felt at liberty 
to put forth the feeling and act of revenge. 
They might not hate their fellow-men, however 
badly they might behave. Not a lion that roars, 
not a serpent that hisses, not a worm that trails 
along its slimy unsightliness, is allowed to call 
out fierceness and vindictiveness in our hearts. 
We may not even hate Satan, that great enemy 
of God and man, eager and laborious as he is for 
our destruction, stained as he is with the best 
blood of millions of our predecessors. We may 
lawfully fear and shrink from all such beings; 
but as for hating them, that is forbidden. So 
godly men have always felt. But they have 
never felt restrained from pouring out on sin all 
the wrath and hatred and retaliation of which 
they were capable. That they might hate to 
their hearts' content. That they might revenge 
themselves upon without stint. That gives to 



1 



I 

'■ THE SUPREME EVIL. 119 

all odious things all their odiousness. There is 
no venom in ignorance, error, pain, deformity, in 
wild beasts, bad men, and destroying Satan, save 
what sin gives to them. This is the one evil and 
bitter thing. If they should choose to lift gaunt- 
leted hand against this enemy of earth and hea- 
ven, neither earth nor heaven would have any- 
thing to say against it. A voice has ever sounded 
within them, saying, 

'' Bruise the monster without stint, if you will. 
Prostrate and trample upon it, if such is your 
pleasure. Nay, torture it and crucify it and 
thrust a whole quiver of darts mercilessly through 
its very heart, if it will give you any satisfaction. 
Fear not that God or conscience will have any- 
thing to object. Yours is a sort of revenge that 
lies beyond the scope of that law that bids us love 
our enemies and not avenge ourselves. Nay, the 
more severely you treat sin, the more you loathe 
and hate and persecute it, the better pleased will 
God be.'' 

So the inner voice has sounded in the hearts 
of all good men, time out of mind. And there- 
upon a voice has fallen from heaven, saying, 
Amen. The voices from above and within have 
been obeyed; and good men in every age have 
followed God in hating and hunting the enemy 
of enemies. They have undertaken great adven- 



I20 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

tures and campaigns, they have done heroic 
things, they have organi:^ed great Christian insti- 
tutions and armies against the common foe. 

It is not more plain that God and his friends 
have set in motion many great agencies against 
sin than it is that they have always left it with 
man to say how much good he will get from 
them. If he so choose, he may get none what- 
ever. If he so choose, he may in due time have 
the last stain taken out of his moral nature, so 
that it shall be white as the driven snow, and so 
be fit to enter through the gate into the City. All 
along the track of the ages God's course with sin 
has evidently respected human freedom. It has 
ever been an arguing, entreating, promising, 
threatening, commanding. You and I can put 
all these under our feet if we will; and, if we 
will, we can yield to them and be blessed. The 
object of the gospel is to persuade men to the lat- 
ter course. If they wait till the judgment day 
they will find no other course available. Let us 
allow ourselves to be persuaded to take it. By 
prayer, by the truth, by holy strivings, by the 
Holy Ghost, let us wear away within ourselves 
and others the empire of sin. Now is the time for 
this great work. This world is the battlefield on 
which we must conquer or die; the narrow Ther- 
mopylae where the feeblest, with God to help 



THE SUPREME EVII.. 121 

him, can, and inust^ if it is ever done, beat back 
and exterminate the hosts of his spiritual foes; 
the dreadfully wasted corner of God's great vine- 
yard where we are set to do faithful work at the 
task of restoration till ends our short day. 

Is sin losing ground in the world ? We can- 
not but think that it is, and has been for a lono- 
time. The usurper has been very loath to yield, 
has been very stubborn at resisting, has contested 
the ground inch by inch, has managed to main- 
tain itself in full force in some places, and even 
to make large gains in others; but in general its 
power is on the decline. Since Christianity came 
in, sin has been going out. The Christian area 
was never so broad as at present, and is broaden- 
ing year by year. The Bible has not been work- 
ing in vain. The ministry have not been preach- 
ing in vain. Not in vain have Christians for two 
thousand years been praying, *'Thy kingdom 
come." There have been set-backs in the reli- 
gious progress, cloudy days when poor eyes could 
not well see to read the promises; but abuse after 
abuse, oppression after oppression, superstition 
after superstition, iniquity after iniquity, has 
given way, till human society as a whole is in 
a far healthier state than ever before. 

This improvement, with occasional relapses, 
will go on till sin is quite dethroned in the world; 



x2,z the; supreme things. 

till Satan is bound, and *'tlie kingdoms of this 
world have become the kingdoms of our Lord 
and of his Christ'' For a very long time, called 
in Scripture a thousand years, this happy state 
of thino-s will continue. Then for a time the 

o 

old enemy will revive and flourish after the old 
manner, perhaps after a worse. But it will be 
for a short time only. At last the long delayed 
and much desired decree of expulsion from the 
world will come; and the great Vandal that has 
so long wasted and reigned among men will be 
cast out into returnless banishment, in favor of 
the *'new heavens and the new earth in which 
shall dwell rio^hteousness " evermore. 

It will be an exile — not a death. Would that 
it might be the latter: but, alas, this cannot be. 
Sin, for some reason that does not impugn the 
Avisdom, power, or goodness of God, is immortal. 
Por Satan, that incorrigible sinner, is immortal, 
as are also many other incorrigible angels and 
men. So the best that can be hoped for in regard 
to sin is that the enemy will be shut up and re- 
main for ever a prisoner. Let us be glad that it 
wdll at last get a portion of its deserts. 

Meanwhile the task that faces us all, as it has 
done all the centuries, is to baffle and buffet and 
cripple and plague and minimize the foe to the 
utmost. That is, w^e are to copy the work that 



THE SUPREME EVIL. 123 

God and his saints have been engaged in for 
many an age, and not without success. In all 
men the ravages of sin have been restrained; in 
some its power has been finally broken; nay, in 
cases almost innumerable, and in every age since 
the earth was peopled, have redeemed and sancti- 
fied ones been made ready to enter in at that ce- 
lestial gate which once saw sin and Satan cast 
wrathfuUy through it into hell. But how much 
remains to be done ! The kingdom of God is yet 
very far from having come. The world is yet a 
moral desert. Sin is neither dead nor dying nor 
dethroned. It is still the king of terrors. And 
whatever powers of loathing and retaliation we 
possess we are bound to pour forth impetuously 
on the reprobate, and fulfil the law of charity to 
beinofs bv breakinof its letter to that nefarious 
principle that would destroy them all. Let us 
for once return evil for evil. Let the measure of 
retaliation be settled by the measure of the mis- 
chief done or intended. It will now do to be gov- 
erned by the old tradition, ''An eye for an eye." 
I will do to it as it means to do to me. I w^iU 
render to it according to its w^orks. Sin has 
hunted for the precious life. It refuses to be satis- 
fied with anything short of our ruin, temporal and 
eternal. It is cruel, merciless, never gives quar- 
ter. It cries for the blood of all our friends. It 



134 "^HE SUPREME THINGS. 

is eager not to leave us a single hope, a single 
ray of comfort, a single fibre of hold on the mercy 
of our Creator. Its one cry from morning to 
night is, '' Destroy ! destroy !" Let that cry be 
retorted. Inasmuch as in this solitary case we 
can lawfully reciprocate hate and vindictiveness, 
let us do it with all our heart. I^et us turn im- 
placable hunters also; and while sin would go 
forth with unleashed bloodhounds after us, let us 
pursue it through all the windings of our hearts 
and the thoroughfares and by-ways of society, 
with intent to do what we can towards making 
a full end of the Moloch — for our own sakes, for 
the world's sake, for the sake of the God whom it 
defies and the Saviour whom it crucifies. 

Having settled our minds to do this, we need 
to form clear conceptions of the means by which 
our enemy may be injured. You can injure a fel- 
low-man, if you choose, in a great variety of 
ways. What say you to talking against him? 
What say you to stripping him of his property — 
perhaps taking away from his lips his bread and 
water? What say you to stinging him by neg- 
lect, or bruising him by a blow ? What say you 
to drawing sword upon him and thrusting it into 
his bosom ? There is no lack of means of harm 
if you are really in earnest to do it. 

So there is no lack of means for damaging sin 



THE SUPREME EVIL. 1 25 

if sucli damage is a matter your heart is set upon. 
Where there is a will there is a way. Begin the 
war by repenting and believing in Christ. This 
is the indispensable first step. Then go on to 
others. What say you to talking against sin — 
talkinof ao:ainst it to God in the voice of true 
prayer; begging him to fight against it in your- 
self and elsewhere; talking against it to your fel- 
low-sinners, warning them of its deadly nature 
and of the craft with which it works towards its 
destructive ends? You can hurt sin without 
stooping to slander: you can do it by telling the 
bare truth. Its influence has often been broken 
by wise words of reproof and exhortation; still 
more often by earnest words of prayer going up 
into the ear of God and bringing down against 
the foe a wounding and defeating grace. The 
means that has done good servdce in this w^ay 
ever since man was made is available still; and 
never shall w^e pray to God against the foe a true 
prayer without giving it a blow more or less dis- 
abling. And our words spoken in due season to 
our fellow-men will often be as goads, and as 
nails fastened by the master of assemblies. 

What say we to stripping sin of its means 
of livelihood? Error, bad associations, tempta- 
tions, are its daily bread: let us cut off these 
supplies on which the monster fattens and is 



126 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

strong. Clear your mind of false views by dili- 
gent use of Holy Scripture. Find your compan- 
ions among the virtuous and devout Say in 
the ear of Heaven, ''Lead us not into tempta- 
tion,'' and in the ear of your own soul, ''Thou 
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Distrust 
your own strength, and ever consider it a lawful 
policy to gain a battle by forestalling the neces- 
sity for one. This is carrying famine into the 
enemy's camp. This is silently reducing it to 
discouragement and debility. It is the way, in 
part, in which the saints of other times have 
risen to mastery over their remaining corruption, 
and have crucified the flesh, with its affections 
and lusts. It has not about it the halo of success- 
ful pitched battle; but it is a very safe and sure 
way of wasting the enemy. Let us try it in faith 
and patience, and so have the satisfaction of see- 
ing sin grow pale and haggard from day to day 
from w^ant of its daily bread. 

What say you to open violence and formal 
assault and fairly joined battle, with shield of 
faith and helmet of salvation and sword of the 
Spirit? This is sometimes necessary. All temp- 
tations cannot be avoided. Sometimes Provi- 
dence allows sin to draw up in front of us in for- 
mal and full array; and then nothing remains for 
us but to throw away scabbard, call on God, peal 



THK SUPREME EVII.. 127 

thunderously forth the shout of onset, and rush 
impetuously to the conflict. Need we have any 
fear as to the result ? In providential encounters 
of this sort, as our day is, so our strength will be. 
If we are true to ourselves, God will give us con- 
quering power. Our blows wull drive through 
buckler and breastplate. If the enemy succeeds 
in bruising our heel we shall succeed in bruising 
his head. And so the conflict will end in the 
w^eak things of the world confounding those 
which are mighty, and things which are not 
bringing to naught the things which are. Sin 
will be left bleeding and prostrate on the field. 



VII, 



Tte Supreme (kooi 



HOLINESS. 



THE SUPREME GOOD. i;^Z 



VIL THE SUPREME GOOD. 

We look with awe on those events which we 
call miracles. A miracle brought matter out of 
nothingness. Miracles fitted up the great globes 
of space as abodes of living beings. Miracles 
produced these living beings in their various 
species, from the simplest mosses and seaweeds, 
up to men and angels, with their spiritual and 
immortal powers. And all along the course of 
ancient history, through the eyes of inspired men, 
we see the divine power at intervals breaking 
through the stratum of ordinary events into as- 
tonishing Alps and Andes of display, for the pro- 
tection of the righteous, the punishment of the 
wicked, and the evidencing of divine messengers. 
The plain of Egypt has been mountainous with 
miracles. The wastes of the desert have seen vol- 
canoes huger than Sinai. Palestine has looked 
on peaks of supernaturalism higher than Nebo 
and Lebanon. 

Especially do we veil our faces as we look 
back through the misty centuries on the effulgent 
miracles of Jesus. He touched the sick, and the 
sickness fled. He reproved stormy winds and 
waves, and they were still. ''Come forth !'' he 



133 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

said to the buried and putrefying corpse, and 
Lazarus awoke and came. • In every direction the 
quaking laws of nature recognized their Master, 
and cried out, *^ We know thee, who thou art, the 
Holy One of God !" Before the mysterious ener- 
gies of a glance or a word from him nothing 
seemed able to keep from falling on its knees. 
Those were great times. Those were colossal 
deeds. They were full of the greater Person. We 
would take off the shoes from our feet could we 
stand where the five thousand were fed, or at the 
entering in of Nain, or on the shore of that Gali- 
lean lake across, whose booming waters went so 
sublimely the all-conquering voice. 

But we know of something sublimer than a 
miracle; even though it be a miracle of Jesus 
Christ. If this is a paradox, it is so only till it 
has had a moment's attention. Give it that, and 
we see a truth shining not only by its own light, 
but shining like a sun. It is a grand truth, as 
well as a self-evident one, that an act of real 
virtue, and especially a course of such acts, is a 
far o^rander thinof than the shakinof of the earth 
and the raising of the dead. Goodness is a sub- 
limer epic than omnipotence. 

The crowning glory of God is not his omnipo- 
tence nor his omniscience nor his eternity; it is 
his eternal goodness. It is that w^hich makes all 



I 



THE SUPREME GOOD, I33 

his other attributes a blessing to himself and to 
the rest of the universe. It is dreadful to think 
of, what God would be if altogether without good- 
ness. It is glorious to think of, what God is, 
seeing that a perfect goodness reigns absolutely 
among all his faculties and directs all their move- 
ments. Such being the case, he can be loved and 
trusted, instead of being hated and feared; he 
is infinitely happy, instead of being infinitely 
wretched; he is an infinite Benefactor, instead of 
being an infinite curse. 

The crowding glory of the holy angels is, not 
that they are fair, or that they excel in strength, 
or that they fly through heaven on resplendent 
wungs, or that they never die, or that they have 
so glorious a w^orld for their home; but it is that 
they are good. Strip them of their goodness, and 
what good would their other belongings do them? 
They would be wTctched in spite of them all, 
because they w^ould be wretches. Nothing could 
prevent it. Vain their faultless beauty, vain 
their matchless strength, vain their lofty genius, 
vain their undying life, save to make them the 
greater curses to themselves and others. Heaven 
would vanish in diabolism. Goodness is the vital 
sweetness that keeps even the holy Gabriel from 
rolling into a fiend — heaven from rolling into a 
hell. 



134 "J^HK SUPREME THINGS. 

As goodness is the greatest Iliad in heaven, 
so, of course, it is the greatest Iliad on earth. 
Even certain mental qualities and acts which 
have no claim at all to be considered virtuous, 
do yet excite in every well-conditioned mind 
greater admiration and reverence than the largest 
measures of merely outward power that man ever 
wielded. When the first Napoleon was at his 
zenith he wielded an influence in the affairs of 
the world quite beyond example. His will could 
set in motion an amount of physical force suffi- 
cient to overawe and control a continent. But 
is it this fact that gives that autocrat the measure 
of admiration he receives from thoughtful men? 
Certainly, that great mass of valorous and vet- 
eran brute-force that dominated the beofinninof 
of the century was not half so sublime a thing 
as the imperial intelligence, the tremendous ener- 
gy, the indomitable perseverance, the intense self- 
mastery in some respects, by the aid of which 
this force was gathered and trained and hurled 
wherever the man chose, as from some mighty 
catapult. It is the solid glory of these great 
qualities, always playing over his swift path like 
the dangerous lightning, which makes Napoleon 
so impressive, rather than the poor lustre of the 
crown he plucked and of the bayonets he could 
muster. 



THE SUPRKMK GOOD. I35 

Or, consider a different sort of power, that of 
a Milo or a Samson or a Hercules; and compare 
it, say, with the steady truthfulness of yonder 
little child whose mother has taught him great 
scorn of a lie. Does any right-minded person 
for a moment think that there is as much dignity 
in the thews and sinews of those old giants as 
there is in the magnanimous contempt of equivo- 
cation which swells that boy-heart, and would 
not allow him to discolor the truth for the sake 
of all fine toys a boy-heart ever loved ? Though 
rooted only in heredity and the filial instincts^ 
and so falling short of Christian virtue, such 
truthfulness is still a nobler thing than the brute 
strength that carries away the gates of Ga^a or 
strangles the serpent Python. 

As much might be said of many another mere 
morality. Of course, much more may we say of 
that much loftier and consummate thing which 
we call Christian virtue, that no sort or degree of 
mere power can compete with in intrinsic majesty 
and usefulness. 

Let us first think of a man whose life puts 
vividly before us the principle of Christian faith. 
He has an immovable confidence in the charac- 
ter and government of God. It is true that his 
range of view is very limited, and that he cannot 
see the reasons for one in a thousand of providen- 



136 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

tial events; but what of that? It is not necessary 
for him to see; does he not know that all thincrs 
are directed by infinite wisdom and goodness? 
He sees some things clearly, and among them 
that the march of the system about him is some- 
times for the present advantage of evil-doers'; but 
what of that? Shall he be disturbed when he 
knows that justice and judgment are the habita- 
tion of His throne ? He is smitten in his own 
person and family till there is bleeding at the 
heart; but what of that even ? Does he not know 
of the fatherhood of God, and of the working 
together of all things for good to them who love 
God, and of at least one heart that can say, 
''Though he slay me, yet wuU I trust him"? 
With eye turned confidingly upwards he treads 
calmly the darkest and roughest way appointed 
him; w4th heart fixed, trusting in the Lord, he 
accepts all changes and fears no evils. Now let 
us be well assured that, to the eye of yonder 
gazing angel, this is a sublimer spectacle than 
is given in any feat of miracles. It must be 
that in the sight of God, the all-observer, that 
mighty faith is held in higher honor than any 
so-called reversals of the laws of nature, though 
they waken the dead or enthrone a new sun in 
the sky. 

Next, consider an example of Christian for- 



THE SUPREME GOOD. 1 37 

giveness and love of enemies. Some are very far 
from thinking these things admirable. Such per- 
sons, happily, are fewer than they once were. 
Not far back w^as the paradise of ''men of honor." 
And it was the fool's paradise. Those men of 
spirit were not ashamed of profanity, of gam- 
bling, of lewdness; but they were ashamed of not 
resenting and avenging an insult. That showed 
a want of manliness. It meant poltroonery. It 
was to be for ever dishonored. They were the 
duelists and fire-eaters of another generation. But 
we are not wholly out of the woods of barbarism 
yet. We still see about us not a few good haters, 
not to say boycotters and dynamiters — men who 
both practice and justify the lex talio7iis as be- 
tween man and man. But, after all, these men 
act rather from an inpulse of the heart than from 
deliberate judgment. Let these retaliators, these 
sticklers for an honorable satisfaction, once see 
the Christian doctrine as to the treatment of ene- 
mies faithfully carried out in the life of a man as 
intelligent, as honorable, as high-spirited and 
passionate by nature as any, and they would con- 
fess to having seen a beautiful and glorious thing. 
Here he is: a man naturally proud and fierce 
and implacable, and still able to feel the sting of 
an injury as keenly as any. But he has been 
learning in the school of Christ, and will now 



138 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

put oflf the old man, with his deeds. He does 
not wait long for an opportunity to reduce his 
new principles to practice, for the mistakes, prej- 
udices, and selfishness of the world around are 
thick as leaves iu Vallombrosa, He hears of the 
arrows that have gone out against his good name, 
finds that a friend has betrayed his confidence, 
receives slights and insults from his neighbor, is 
defrauded of his dues in business, perhaps knows 
w^hat it is to suffer the indignity of a blow. 

''Now," says the world, "behave with be- 
coming spirit." 

''Now," says Satan at his right hand (and 
at his left too, for that matter), "do as the world 
does: let your bosom fill with a tempest of vexa- 
tion and hate, and go make your enemies as mis- 
erable as you can. " 

"Now," says a sweet voice from above, "do 
even as I: love your enemies and do good to 
them that hate you. ' ' 

And he hearkens to the heavenly voice. The 
brave, strong man, who could dare with the 
boldest and smite with the strongest, whose hand 
could fell an ox, whose courage could lead a for- 
lorn hope, whose tongue could curse eloquently 
in seven languages, whose purse could hunt of- 
fenders through all the costs and delays of that 
" circumlocution office " called the courts, whose 



THE SUPRE:mH good. I39 

influence could quarantine and paralyze any busi- 
ness, this man, I say, represses the rising storm 
within him and says to the demon of the storm, 
''Get thee behind me, Satan !'' He looks up and 
sees the Infinite Father kind to the unthankful 
and the evil, and gathers strength to be godlike 
as he puts up a prayer for those who despitefully 
use and persecute him. See him carefully fan- 
ning into a flame the checked charity of his 
heart. See him as earnestly watching for oppor- 
tunities to return good for the evil he has suffered 
as the eagle watches for its prey, and at last ten- 
derly feeding the hungry slanderer, clothing the 
naked defrauder, visiting the imprisoned traitor, 
and binding up the wounded hand that had 
smitten him. See him doing thus, not once, but 
as a life-long employment; not with the unsteadi- 
ness of an impulse, but with the constancy of a 
principle. And now we ask if this is not grand 
doing — grand after God's own style of grandeur? 
Is it too much to say that it is sublimer than the 
mantle of Elijah or the rod of Moses? Nay, 
would not the forgiving, loving Christ, the Christ 
whose prayer for his enemies went up from gory 
Calvary, be disposed to give it the place of dig- 
nity above one of his own miracles? 

But a Christian virtue is never found by itself. 
It is but one of a cluster. It is but one of a large 



140 



THE SUPREME THINGS, 



sisterhood that never part company. Notice that 
lovely sisterhood as it lifts the latch of some heart 
and enters. Watch the result. Straightway the 
man that was becomes another. With strenuous 
and uncompromising hand he sets himself to bat- 
ter down the granite of evil habits; and, though 
the task is slow to a miracle, he continues toiling 
as long as he lives. Depraved propensities, whose 
roots are insinuated everywhere among the foun- 
dations of his being, he carefully shreds away 
with daily labor. He becomes a ruler of his own 
wilful spirit. He puts bits in the mouths of his 
passions, and reins them tightly along the dan- 
gerous paths of temptation. Every day he fights 
some battle and wins it; contends against some 
principalities and powers, and drags them in tri- 
umph at his chariot wheels. Every day he throws 
down the gauntlet to himself, and every day, by 
aid of faith and prayer and other weapons of 
heavenly temper, the holy tournament sees the 
natural man go down before the new man's deter- 
mined onset. When God calls him to endure, 
he braces himself up to submission and fortitude, 
and bears the discipline with a philosophy not 
born of Zeno and infinitely loftier than the Porch 
ever heard. When God calls him to do, he at 
once enters the vineyard and w^orks as jealously 
as though the purple harvest were to be all his 



THE SUPREME GOOD. 141 

own. When God calls him to dare for duty and 
humanity, he can face courageously the opposi- 
tion of the great and the rebukes of majorities; 
he can deliver the hated reproof, and stand like 
a rock by the truth in the days of its weakness 
and unpopularity; he can stand up in his place 
to defend the true and the right not only when 
he foresees that his efforts will be followed by the 
hosannas of the public, but when he knows that 
he shall hear nothing but anathemas, lose friend- 
ships which he dearly prizes, and inflict deep 
wounds on his temporal fortunes. Not only when 
Christ's path is strewn with branches of palm, 
and men are coming to take him by force to 
make him a king, shall Christ's part be taken, 
but when king and procurator and priests and 
people are against him, and there is every pros- 
pect of a crucifixion. Onward, brave, wonderful 
Paul, to the end of thy well-fought fight and 
well-run race ! Nothing moved by thy perils and 
sufferings on field and flood; nothing dimmed in 
hope and trust and love by the darkness of the 
deeds and characters about thee and against thee; 
ready to be offered on the altar of heroic service — 
approach with radiant face the throne of martyr- 
dom ! At last mount the scaffold on thy way to 
heaven, and step from the presence of the execu- 
tioner into the presence of God ! 



i 



142 THE SUPREME THINGS, 



' The majesty of a miracle is before us. We 
are bidden to look at the glory of that exploit 
that unveils to the eye born blind the delightful 
scenery of earth and sky, or that brings the dead 
man out of his grave and '' kindles a soul under 
the ribs of death.'' Yes; exceeding wonderful. 
We know of nothing more so, saving certain 
qualities and acts of rational and moral beings. 
We must be allowed to make this exception. 
We must say of such a great, effulgent, solar 
career as that just described — a career which in 
all its substantial features is open to us all — that 
it has an intrinsic majesty about it which no 
amount of purely physical, though divine, forces 
has ever shown. It is itself a miracle. All other 
miracles are of small account save as they go to 
produce this miracle of grace. The omnipotence 
of God is full of grandeur, but it is not so grand 
as his virtue. Of course, human virtue is just 
like the divine in its essential nature; and there 
are unsounded depths of riches and beauty in it 
w^hich are but faintly imaged by those azure and 
starred fields above us which stretch away even 
to the gates of heaven. Greater than a miracle ? 
Yes; for though I speak with the tongues of an- 
gels, and have the gift of prophecy, and have 
faith so that I could remove mountains, and have 
not charitv, I am nothino^. 



the; supreme good. 143 

Is it possible that any can be ashamed of be- 
ing thought in search of such a treasure, or even 
of being thought willing to sell all that he has 
in order to buy the pearl of great price? Is it 
possible that any can think that they do well in 
running in hot haste after earthly dignities which 
they may never overtake, while they take no 
pains to secure that noblest of all conceivable 
prizes, the Christian character, which lies within 
reach of the humblest? But such is the infatua- 
tion of many. They pass a kingdom by to seize 
on the toy of a child. That which is grander 
than a miracle of Jesus Christ is doubtless grander 
than fine houses and broad lands, than the staff 
of oflSce, the coronet of nobility, or the distinc- 
tions of the learned. For these things we give 
toiling days and restless nights; what are we do- 
ing in order to be good ? what to be great in the 
sight of God and for the kingdom of heaven ? 

The opposites of Christian virtues are, of 
course, correspondingly unworthy. If trust in 
God, charity to man, holy submission and forti- 
tude in the cloudy and dark day, sacred energy 
and courage to do and to dare all things for truth 
and right, deserve the doxology w^e have given 
them, then what shall we say of distrust of God, 
of selfishness, of revenge, of murmurs against 
divine Providence, of industry and audacity in 



144 ^H^ SUPREME THINGS. 

wrong thinking and wrong doing ! In the view 
of God we are dishonored as much by the one set 
of qualities as we should be honored by the other. 
As high as we ascend to virtue, so low do we de- 
scend to sin: if the height of one is heaven, the 
depth of the other is hell. Hence it is that at 
the resurrection some will rise to shame and ever- 
lasting contempt, as it will then be seen what 
abysses of un worthiness there are in cherished 
sin. It is of great moment to see and feel it 
now, while it is possible to rise from these 
abysses. While it is possible^ I say: for more than 
a rumor has reached us that the golden chain 
which now depends from heaven into the black 
and awful gulfs, and by the grasping of which 
alone rescue can come, will soon be drawn up 
finally beyond our reach. 

The miracles of Christ were chiefly for the 
purpose of rescuing us from dishonoring sin and 
raising us to heights of Christian virtue. It was 
not solely or chiefly to gladden the widow of 
Nain that her son was given back to her and to 
life: not solely nor chiefly to gratify Bartimseus 
with the beauty of friendly faces, and of hill and 
dale and sky, that his eyes were opened. These 
things were done mainly for the purpose of be- 
getting confidence in Christ, and so of carrying 
Christianity with power to the hearts of all gen- 



THE SUPREME GOOD. I45 

erations. And now let us consider the responsi- 
bility of putting from ourselves the majesty of 
Christian virtue when recommended by the maj- 
esty of Christian miracles. Shall God have re- 
versed for us the laws of nature in vain, and yet 
his tribunal look indulgently upon us? Shall 
the dead have come out of their graves with fruit- 
less persuasion, and yet we be counted worthy of 
but few stripes? And when the boon tendered 
us is even more sublime than the treasures of 
almighty power which have been expended in 
bringing it with due credentials to our door, will 
it pass for little or nothing if we refuse to accept 
it or even neglect to do so? We ought to be sure 
that it will be either a most disastrous or a most 
blessed thing for us that so splendid a gift is sent 
to us by the hands of so splendid a messenger. 
Which shall it be? By our immortality, by the 
heaven we wish and the hell we fear, by the 
agonies of atoning Calvary, by the truth of Holy 
Scripture and the mission of the Holy Ghost, let 
it be that good part, nobler than miracles, which 
cannot be taken from us. 



Supem- Thinjjs?. JQ 



VIII. 



Tte kpreme Appetite. 



HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHT- 
EOUSNESS. 



THE SUPREME APPETITE. 149 



VIII. THE SUPREME APPETITE. 

To my thought the supreme appetite is a 
hunger and thirst for righteousness. 

We hunger and thirst for righteousness when 
we desire it as hungry men do their food and 
thirsty men their drink. And how is that ? In 
the first place they desire it strongly. 

What we mean by hunger is not a willingness 
to eat if our physician and friends think it best 
for us; not a slow preference for eating rather 
than for fasting, which a few morsels will suffice 
to exhaust; but such a preference as a robust 
man carries home with him from the field where 
he has labored and fasted all the day. Does he 
need urging to carry the smoking viands to his 
lips? Must his family represent to him in a 
strong light his need of food and the excellence 
of the dishes actually provided for him, before he 
can be brought to make a beginning upon them ? 
Or, without invitation, does he draw up languidly 
to the table, and with many a pause proceed, 
with uncertain eye and feeble knife, to cut oflf 
here and there a trifle from the huge joint ? No, 
he goes at once and eagerly to the waiting table. 
With decisive eye and hand he helps himself 



I50 



the: supreme; things. 



largely. He eats as if it were a pleasure. No 
mere trifle satisfies him; but portion after por- 
tion is consumed with scarcely abating relish. It 
w^ould be a trial to him were some accident to 
break in on his repast and send him to his bed 
half supperless. This is the man whom we call 
hungry. 

So whoever hungers after righteousness de- 
sires it strongly. He is not merely willing to 
have righteousness at the recommendation of 
urgent friends; he does not merely consent to 
have holiness put within him if God has a mind 
to take the trouble; he does not choose religion 
with that sickly choice which seems to want but 
little of it, nor want that little long. His mind 
goes out towards it as towards a treasure. Not 
to have it would be painful in a high degree. 
He longs for it. He longs for it as does a miser 
for gold. 

Another feature of this hunger for righteous- 
ness in a man is that it is a longing for his own 
righteousness. Hunger does not propose to feed 
somebody; it proposes to feed him who has the 
sensation. Thirst is not a desire to give drink to 
somebody; it proposes to give drink to him who 
feels the thirst. It is very well, of course, to 
want the needy to have food and drink; no one 
can deny that an anxiety to see the famishing 



the: supre:me appetite. 151 

fed is a commendable thing; but there is no hun- 
ger about it. This appetite has respect only to 
the feeding of him who feels it. You may have 
no desire whatever for food yourself, and yet be 
very desirous to give it to certain others, and put 
forth much eflfort to do so. Just so you may have 
a strong wish that certain others should be right- 
eous, and yet have no wish to be righteous your- 
self. Many a father very earnestly prefers that 
his family should be under the control of Chris- 
tian principle long before he is willing to govern 
his own conduct by it. Many a man wishes 
strongly that all his neighbors' dealings with him 
should be characterized by honesty and unselfish- 
ness and charitableness, w^hile he is very far from 
caring to have his own conduct possess the same 
characteristics. You want your enemies to repent 
and confess and make amends; you want them 
to hold in their mouths as with bit and bridle; 
you want all about you to be scrupulously careful 
of your rights, and even tender and generous in 
their treatment of you. It is all very well; but 
when you come to hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness, you will have a strong desire to exer- 
cise repentance, justice, gentleness, and generos- 
ity yourself. You will greatly wish to exhibit 
in your own proper person all Christian graces, 
forbearances, self-denials. The gospel messages 



152 THE SUPREME THINGS. 



II 

which you are forward to have your fellow-hear- 
ers take to themselves, you will also be anxious 
to have brought powerfully home to your own 
conscience and heart. The pride, the covetous- 
ness, the envy, the malice, the backbiting, the 
dishonesty, which so displease you in others, you 
will be quite as much displeased with in your- 
self. 

Still another element in hunger and thirst for 
righteousness is that it is a longing for righteous- 
ness/?;^ its own sake. Why does the hungry man 
eat so voraciously? Why does the thirsty man 
drink so eagerly? Is it that he may remain 
strong, his eye bright, his face full and fair and 
ruddy? This, indeed, may result; but is this 
the object present to his mind while satisfying 
his appetite? Not at all. He does not look be., 
yond the grateful water and the savory food. 
He eats and drinks because it is a pleasure to eat 
and drink. For its own sake the brimming cup 
would part his panting lips were no strength re- 
newed and no health preserved by it. The appe- 
tites of hunger and thirst are not desires for fresh- 
ness, vigor, and good looks: they are simply de- 
sires for food and drink as such. So hunger for 
righteousness is not a desire to escape punish- 
ment, not a desire for the temporal comforts and 
rewards of religion, not a desire for heaven at 



THK SUPRKMK APPIi:TlTK. 1 53 

last, not a desire for righteousness as the means 
of these; it is a desire for righteousness for its 
own beautiful and glorious sake. Desiring right- 
eousness greatly on account of the salvation con- 
nected with it is no more hunger for righteous- 
ness than desiring food greatly for the sake of 
the strength connected with it is bodily hun- 
ger. One may actually loathe the food w^hich 
yet he desires to take as the necessary means of 
supporting nature. Under a sense of its neces- 
sity he may even beg and struggle for it with all 
possible earnestness. Yet it would be an abuse 
of language to say that the man is hungry. So 
a man may really loathe righteousness, and yet 
desire it as the indispensable means of eternal 
life, and pray and labor for it because it is indis- 
pensable; certainly a most wise and profitable 
thing to do if he cannot yet do better. Still, 
such a man cannot be said to hunger and thirst 
after righteousness. What he is hungering for 
is salvation. 

Now it is possible to love and crave Christian 
virtue apart from the connection established be- 
tween it and salvation — simply for the sake of its 
own pure and glorious nature. To love such a 
God as ours is intrinsically excellent and beau- 
tiful; to lead a life full of trust, honor, and obe- 
dience tow^ards him^ and full of charity, truth, 



154 'J^HE SUPREME THINGS. 

and helpfulness towards men, is inherently fair 
and beautiful beyond expression. When we come 
to see and feel this, when we come to have an 
ardent desire for the blessing because of its na- 
tive and intrinsic worth, then it is that w^e are 
hungering and thirsting after righteousness. 

It is promised to such persons that they shall 
be filled. This promise may be understood in 
three w^ays: as promising as much righteousness 
as there is capacity for, as much as there is a 
disposition to receive, or as much as can well be 
considered a large and generous spiritual pro- 
vision. 

Whosoever desires righteousness greatly, de- 
sires it for himself, and desires it for its own 
sake, is a Christian. In some w^ay he has come 
into possession of a different nature from that 
with which he was born. The whole tenor of his 
affections and purposes has undergone a change, 
a change by which sin has come to be viewed 
and treated as an enemy. Such a man is fore- 
ordained to heaven. And when he arrives there 
he will have as much righteousness as he can 
contain. Every capacity for virtue will be com- 
pletely filled. At no moment will it be possible 
for him to exercise a greater virtue than he wall 
be at that moment exercising. He will feel and 
do all right things so perfectly, according to the 



THE SUPREME APPETITE. 155 

measure of his nature, that even God can desire 
nothing further of him. 

He will also then be filled in the sense of be- 
inor satisfied with his attainments in rio^hteous- 
ness. At each moment he will have as much 
holiness as he wants for the moment; for he will 
have all that his nature then admits of his hav- 
ing. But neither in this world nor in the next 
will his appetite for goodness be satiated, although 
satisfied and saturated. The more he receives, 
the more he will desire. Let a hungry man con- 
tinue eating a little while, and all his desire for 
food will desert him; it will even give place to 
aversion. But you may continue feeding on right- 
eousness to all eternity without being able to say, 
'^ Give me no more." The flavor of this heaven- 
ly food will get more and more delightful the 
longer it is used. Banquet on it for a thousand 
years, and you will be a thousand times more 
reluctant to rise from the feast than you now are. 
The old Scandinavians supposed that their dead 
warriors, gathered with Odin and Thor in Val- 
halla, were to eat and drink from age to age in 
perpetual festival, the brave entertainment never 
ceasing and never palling. This is heathen non- 
sense, but it is a shadow of Christian wisdom. 
The spirits of the just made perfect, gathered 
with God and his Son, shall keep endless and 



56 



THE SUPREME THINGwS. 



unceasing jubilee at the marriage-supper of the 
Lamb — quaffing righteousness as nectar, eating 
various holiness as ambrosia, eating and drink- 
ing with ever-growing zest — the capacity for vir- 
tue ever growing, holy affections and aims ever 
becoming more intense and firmly seated, and 
the sense of their amazing beauty and value be- 
coming hourly more keen and delightful. 

But the hungry man, hungry for righteous- 
ness, will not have to wait till the next world for 
a liberal portion of what he craves. In this world 
a great and generous measure of righteousness is 
sure to follow a great and generous desire for it. 
-God will not deal penuriously wuth such a cra- 
ving, even here. The mouths w^hich we open 
widely will obtain much. The laws of nature 
will not play the miser to us. This is altogether 
a sure matter: and in this respect the spiritual 
hunger and thirst have greatly the advantage of 
other sorts. 

Who is there to assure the poor wrecked sailor 
in his open boat, foodless and drinkless now for 
many a day, longing to agony for the meanest 
morsel and the most refuse draught that ever 
parted lips — who is there to assure him that his 
hunger and thirst shall be followed by loaded 
tables and unfailing wells? Hundreds of families 
have this day missed their scanty crusts, and with 



THE SUPREME APPETITE. 157 

hungry eyes are looking hither and thither for 
bread, bread; and who knows that they will find 
it, much less that they will find it in great pre- 
cious loaves? The politician hungers for office: 
is he sure that his wish will be gratified? The 
scholar longs to be famous; the business man 
longs to be rich; the sick longs to be healthful; 
but what one of them all has heaven or earth 
rejoiced w4th the assurance that his longings shall 
be generously satisfied ? 

But let any one of us long for uprightness and 
prayerfulness and unselfishness and conscientious- 
ness and love to God and man — let one long for 
such things, and he is sure that a liberal supply 
will hasten to meet his spiritual hunger. The 
Holy Ghost will spread for him a table. God's 
providence will conspire with his efforts, and 
grain-ships will be wafted into his harbor with 
every wind. 

Place a thirstv man in a land full of wells and 

■ 1/ 

streams; w^ill he not freely drink? Place a hun- 
gry man in a country teeming with grains and 
fruits, its streams full of fish, its forests full of 
game, its homes overflowing w4th abundance and 
generosity; will he not freely eat? Will he not 
take the pains to kneel down and put his fevered 
lips to the cool water? Will he not be at the 
trouble of reaping in the fields, fishing in the 



158 THE SUPRKMK THINGS. , |» 

rivers, hunting in the woods, or at least asking 
at the hospitable doors? Certainly he will; and \ 
as certainly he will freely eat and drink. With 
a tongue to ask, with sickles, hooks, muskets, 
ready to hand, he will no doubt erelong sit down 
to a plentiful repast. 

Every soul that thirsts for righteousness is iu 
just such a land. There are fountains of goodness 
on all sides of him which he is more than wel- 
come to drink. It is a land heavy with all man- 
ner of virtue; and the hungry soul has but to go 
forth and reap and hunt and ask, in order to have 
large supplies. God dwells very nigh such a soul. 
His wealthy palace is just across the way. It is 
filled with endless measures of the Holy Ghost, 
and on every glittering gate is written, and 
from every lofty tower the silver trumpets sound, 
''Knock, and it shall be opened to you,'' ''Every 
one that asketh receiveth," "The Spirit and the 
Bride say, Come; and let him that is athirst take 
the w^ater of life freely." 

Such invitations as these mean vast stores of 
righteousness for every soul that properly cares 
for them; and every such soul will not fail to go 
forth and vigorously ply the knocker as required. 
Let no one's face be dark with discouragement 
who is conscious of an earnest desire to be good, 
although his heart seems to himself very, very 



THE SUPREME APPETITE. 159 

wicked. The battle is already more than half 
gained. Through the smoke of the contest I can, 
even now, see the hostile lines waver and break. 
He shall, after a little, love greatly the God whom 
he greatly wishes to love. After a little, the 
hatred of sin, the power against temptation, the 
loftiness of aim, the brave candor and trustful- 
ness and zeal which he longs for and prays for 
will be liberally bestowed. 

''Blessed are they that hunger and thirst 
after righteousness; for they shall be filled. '^ It 
seems, then, that great measures of goodness are 
so precious a thing that whoever is in a sure way 
to them is a most fortunate person. Still more 
happy, of course, is the condition of the man who 
is in actual possession of the prize. Thrice hap- 
py is he who is thoroughly and devotedly reli- 
gious. Thrice happy is he who, not contenting 
himself with a bare entrance into the kingdom of 
God, has pressed forward far towards the heart of 
that kingdom. 

This is Christ's beatitude. 

That of the world is, ''Blessed are they of 
whom all men speak well, who are called wise, 
talented, honorable. Blessed are they who have 
surrounded themselves with luxury and splendor, 
whose mansions are grand, farms broad, robes 
rich, coffers full. Blessed are they who live with- 



l60 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

out labor, without care, without sickness. Blessed 
are the beautiful, the knowing, the influential."; 
Such are the world's beatitudes: but never 
the like did one hear from Christ. In his judg- 
ment that only is the fortunate man who has be- 
come good or is on his way to goodness; and he 
is the most to be congratulated of all who has the 
most goodness of all. Paul's condition was better 
than that of Agrippa, though the former wore 
chains and the latter a crown. Any town pauper, 
if a humble and zealous Christian, is a fitter ob- 
ject for envy than the most powerful autocrat in 
his sins or his backsliding. If any of us have 
been in the habit of taking a different view, it is 
time to revise our opinion. Let us think what 
will become of good looks and fine clothes and 
elegant homes and great influence in a few years. 
Can they keep us when we die? Can they be 
turned to any account at the judgment-day ? Are 
they so much capital with which one can begin 
eternity to advantage? In a short time they 
w^ill forsake us, or we shall forsake them. But 
righteousness once gained will cling to us like 
onr own immortality. It will befriend us might- 
ily in the failing of flesh and heart. In propor- 
tion to its degree it will stand us in stead, and 
plead for us most eloquently and successfully at 
that day when men shall receive according to the 



1 



THH SUPREME APPETITE. l6l 

deeds done in the body. Not that it atones for 
our sins, but that it is the condition on which the 
atonement of Christ takes effect. So it will 
adorn us a mansion, tune us a harp, crown us 
into a kingdom, when we are decayed and for- 
gotten in this world: a mansion that shall be 
fair, a harp that shall be sweet, a kingdom that 
shall be wide and grand, just in proportion to the 
measure of righteousness we have attained here. 
If we want to be the dimmest and uttermost of 
all the brilliant company that shall circle the 
throne of God, we have only to be the feeblest 
and most stumbling of Christians in this world. 
If we want to have the standing and stature of an 
apostle in heaven, we must have the profound 
and mighty piety of an apostle on earth. 

Moreover, the measure of our comfort and 
usefulness here will depend more on the degree 
of our piety than on anything else. *' Oh," says 
some one, ''if I only had the talents of this man, 
how much good I would do!" ''Oh," says 
another, "if I only had the money of that man, 
how much good would I do !" Why, my friend, 
do you not say, "Oh, for the devoted piety of 
that poor and illiterate washer-woman, or of that 
Lazarus whom the angels erelong will carry 
away triumphantly to Abraham's bosom"? It 
would do your usefulness more service than the 

Supremo Tliin;r«. I I 



l6^ THE SUPREME THINGS. 

five talents of your worldly neighbor would do if 
you could appropriate them. Why, that sterling 
virtue accomplishes more by its prayers alone 
than any amount of unsanctified or half-sanctified 
knowledge or money can do. Why not covet that 
better thing for yourself? Have confidence in 
God's beatitude rather than in man's. Let the 
world say what it will, let us say to our hearts, 
*' Blessed is the man who, hungering and thirst- 
ing after righteousness, has come to be filled 
with it, whose Christian faith and obedience are 
of the largest and healthiest." 

Hunger and thirst for material food and drink 
are natural to man. To all healthy bodies they 
are matters of daily experience. It is only when 
some derangement in the bodily system has taken 
place that it becomes careless of and perhaps 
averse to its proper nourishment. And the great 
secret of that widely felt disrelish for righteous- 
ness, the souPs proper food, is found in a similar 
cause. The soul is not in a healthy state. The 
moral nature is sadly deranged and profoundly 
diseased. This fact stands as much in the way of 
our hungering and thirsting after righteousness 
as a fever, a dropsy, a consumption, stands in the 
way of the palate's relishing bread. 

The spiritual appetite, however, is unlike the 
other in a very important respect, namely, in 



THE SUPREME APPETITE. 163 

that it can be acquired by every man, however 
diseased he may be. There is no one whose 
moral constitution is so disordered that he cannot 
come to feel a most keen and abiding relish for 
all that is pure and holy. But sick men cannot 
always awaken a bodily appetite. They may 
tempt themselves with dainties, they may try to 
provoke desire with acids and bitters of all sorts; 
but, inasmuch as the disease still holds them fast, 
without success. The fever still holds on its 
way, and till it ends in death the victim never 
eats with pleasure. But the moral disorder which 
prevents our hungering and thirsting after right- 
eousness is, in every case, capable of being re- 
lieved. We may, every one of us, become con- 
valescent in respect to sin. We may have that 
convalescence carried forward to any point we 
may desire. And so a holy hunger and thirst 
may come. 

But the question is, how to get a check on 
that obstinate distemper, how to get that conva- 
lescence and that far-advanced recovery. It is 
the object of the gospel to tell how this may be 
done and to furnish the means for doing it. 
How do men revive their impaired bodies? 
They employ a skilful physician; they live as 
much as they can in pure air; they conform their 
habits of living to the bodily laws; they keep pa- 



164 ^HE SUPREME THINGS. 

tiently on 111 this course for a considerable time. 
We can revive our moral natures in a like way. 
Let us go to the great physician Christ, and put 
ourselves under his care. Let us live as much as 
may be in the pure air of divine truth and 
Christian influences. Let us set ourselves to 
carefully obeying the moral and religious laws of 
our nature, as we find them laid down in that 
health-book which we call the Bible. Let us 
persevere in the use of these means. So shall 
we find strength and health coming to us. Our 
aversion to duty wull abate, will die, perhaps 
will die as by a stroke of lightning — at any rate 
wall die. In its stead will come a positive taste 
for all holy affections and living; and this will, 
slowly or swiftly, grow into hunger and thirst. 
And then blessed are we; for then we are sure of 
large measures of goodness. We shall be, not 
passably, but nobly religious; not respectably, 
but grandly after God's own image. 

And just as we may cultivate an appetite for 
holiness, so w^e may cultivate an appetite for sin; 
and much more easily. There are men who have 
come to drink in iniquity like water, and to roll 
sin as a sweet morsel under their tongues; just as 
there are men who make it their meat and drink 
to do the will of their Father in heaven. If the 
latter class is of all men the most to be con^fratu- 



THE SUPREME APPETITE. 165 

lated, the former is of all men the most wretched 
and pitiable. Every one who is not a Christian 
either belongs to this unhappy class or is on the 
way to it. He has the positive relish for the car- 
nal, the worldly, the forbidden; this relish natu- 
rally grows stronger daily; we have only to keep 
away from Christ and his treatment, live as little 
as possible in the atmosphere of Christian truth 
and influences, and let our daily way of living be 
in violation of the laws of our spiritual nature, 
and we shall gradually sink from our present 
stand-point towards absolute hunger and thirst 
for sin. It may be a long while before we arrive 
at that wretched goal, but it is ever getting 
nearer. So let us beware of bad tendencies and 
circumstances. Let us cultivate no taste for the 
w^orst of all poisons. But let us, on the contrary, 
aim at hunger for that true bread and thirst for 
that true water which are known to us under va- 
rious names, as righteousness, virtue, goodness, 
religion, Christian character, and to which such 
magnificent promises are made. 



IX 



Tte Supreme Freedom. 



n 



1 



DOING AS WE PLEASE 



I 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 169 



IX. THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 

Some men can hardly say enough in praise of 
liberty. To them it would seem to mean almost 
everything that is good. They paint it in rain- 
bow colors, the highest flights of rhetoric and 
declamation are consecrated to it, they declare it 
worthy of the largest sacrifices that individuals or 
even states can make for it. Read the newspa- 
pers; hear speeches and lectures and debates; let 
our historians, poets, novelists, essayists speak to 
you from their permanent pages, and you will 
find that with many what is called Liberty is one 
of the deities of the world. Is she not called a 
goddess? Does not the goddess of Liberty en- 
lighten the world from Bedloe's Island? We are 
expected to concede that freedom is not only a 
good thing, but a best thing — a thing to suff'er for 
and, if need be, die for. At the magic word we 
are expected to take off our hats and huzza till 
the welkin rings, and fervently declare that for 
it we will endure all things and send ourselves 
and ours to dungeons and battles. Let com- 
merce perish, let the fields turn to deserts, let 
the tool of the mechanic lie silent in every shop, 



170 TIIK SUPRKMi: THINGS. 

let villages and cities mount the heavens in 
smoke in the rear of armies, let tens and hun- 
dreds of thousands of the best lives in the land 
expire in blood, while widows and orphans pine 
and wail in every corner; and yet, if sweet lib- 
erty can be gained or kept by such sacrifices, we 
must pay them freely and count the purchase a 
cheap one. ''Give us liberty or give us death.'' 

On the other hand, there is another class of 
men who are almost equally high-flown in praise 
of order. In their view this is the one thing 
needful to society. These men have little or 
nothing to say about liberty (nothing to say 
against it, perhaps, as well as nothing for it), 
but they have much to say for law and quiet 
and security to person and property, and the just 
subordinations of society, and the necessity for a 
strong government. They are eloquent against 
the ferment of popular elections and the tumul- 
tuous wrestlings of demagogues and parties. 
Mobs and strikes they can hardly denounce too 
much. There is to them a supreme beauty in 
statutes, tribunals, and prisons, and the great 
word Authority they look up to with almost wor- 
shipful veneration. They are firm believers in 
the depravity of human nature as represented by 
the masses; their leading conception of society is 
that of something needing to be restrained; and 



THE supreme; freedom, 171 

phrases such as '^salutary restraint,*' *Svhole- 
some severity," *'the reign of law and order," 
fall easily from their lips. You never hear much 
from them about such men as Hampden and Tell 
and Washington; but you shall find them all 
aglow to speak of the Caesars and Cromwells and 
Napoleons whose mighty hands and mightier 
wills knew how to make *' order reign in War- 
saw." What is the first good in society? Order- 
What is the second? Order. And the third? 
Order. Plainly, order is their goddess, even as 
liberty is the goddess of the other sort of men — 
though we never hear of any Brobdingnag statue 
being erected to the sterner-featured divinity. 

And then there is a third class: men who are 
neither altogether wrapped up in the idea of 
liberty, nor yet in that of order; men who believe 
in both liberty and order, and can praise both in 
the same breath; men who are persuaded that 
there is no necessary antagonism between the 
two, and that a union of them is better than 
either of them alone. They want neither alone. 
Their idea of a fortunate country or individual 
requires liberty in order. The two welded to- 
gether, as heat and a skilful smith can weld 
iron; the two interpenetrated each of the other, 
as the electric current brings together in locked 
embrace two chemical elements: this is their 



172 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

ideal of the mutual relations of liberty and order.' 
They read history neither for the purpose of 
feeding their prejudices against the people and 
their freedom nor for the purpose of feeding 
their prejudices against the ruler and his strong 
arm of repression. Would they expect anything 
in the way of useful action from either half of a 
bisected man ? Could the right side do anything 
valuable apart from the left? or the left apart 
from the right? Set together in the unity of one 
life and organism, the two parts can plough and 
sow and reap and gather into barns till the man 
is overrun with his abundance; apart, they are 
bare of every helpful faculty, and indeed must 
soon poison the air with offensive exhalations. 
Such are the views of the third class of men as 
to the indispensableness of the union of liberty 
and order. They decline to worship the com- 
posite either as a goddess or as a fetich; but they 
think that if one must worship something short 
of the One Personal God he cannot do better 
than build an altar to, not the double-faced Ja- 
nus, but to that double-faced principle whose 
name is Ordered Liberty. 

But, says one, the two things are virtually 
irreconcilable in the present state of human na- 
ture. As the world goes, liberty and order can- 
not be, or at least remain, united. You see how 



1 






THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 173 

it has always been, he continues; just as soon as 
any considerable amount of freedom is trusted to 
the masses, they begin to abuse it. They begin 
to ferment; the winds begin to rise; they grow 
discontented, unreasonable, extravagant. They 
soon break out into confusions, disorders, tu- 
mults; and, at last, like a half- tamed wild beast 
that has been indulged w4th a taste of blood, 
they fling themselves into an unmanageable and 
destructive anarchy. For short periods states 
have contrived to exist in a state of popular 
liberty; but it has always been a very feverish, 
throbbing, tumultuous sort of existence, which 
soon ended in a furious break-up into bedlam, 
and then despotism. Athens was free for a 
while: but what a sea of tossing, conflicting, in- 
tolerable billows were her popular assemblies ! 
Rome was free, so far as a popular form of gov- 
ernment was concerned, for some centuries; but 
as for the order she had, with conscript fathers 
fighting with conscript fathers, patricians inces- 
santly in feud with plebeians, consuls struggling 
with tribunes and one another, civil war treading 
on the heels of civil war, with plenty of riots, 
confiscations, and dictatorships interspersed — as 
for the order she had in that ^olian cave of 
all the tempests, the less said about it the better. 
In short (so says the objector), the idea of con- 



174 ^HE SUPREME THINGS. 

joint order and liberty in the present state of 
human nature is an extravagance. If it is an 
evangelical doctrine that the masses of men are 
''dead in trespasses and sins," are by nature to- 
tally depraved, how can such men be largely left 
to do as they please without falling into intol- 
erable disorders ? 

Such are common ways of thinking and 
speaking. Perhaps they are fair specimens of 
the loose way in which we are accustomed to 
speak on such subjects; that is, without any 
precise definition of terms, and so with a variable 
meaning of them. What do we mean by liberty, 
that much-abused word ? It is time to settle on 
an exact definition when we are asked w^hether 
liberty is consistent with order. Do we mean by 
it, as people sometimes do, that state of a person 
in which he shares with the other members of his 
community in appointing such institutions, law- 
makers, and magistrates as the people please? 
Do we mean by it that state of a person in which 
he is allowed to do as he pleases in all matters, 
so far as this does not interfere with a like allow- 
ance to others — that is, so far as this does not 
trespass on the rights of others ? That liberty in 
either of these senses is universally incompatible 
with order (at least, with as much order as the 
absence of such liberty), even in the present state 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 1 75 

of human nature, cannot be conceded. Facts are 
against it. Though much of the experience of 
the world in connection with what is called self- 
government has been sad, and we never expect to 
see the time, this side of the judgment-day, when 
even such qualified liberty and perfect order shall 
coexist in any earthly spot, yet history assures us 
that certain Christian lands can, under free insti- 
tutions, sustain fully as large and apparently as 
stable quiet and good order as have ever been 
seen under any institutions. 

But there is still another meaning given to 
the word liberty, a much broader meaning, the 
broadest meaning possible, a meaning in w^hich 
w^e sweep away all limitations, and allow one to 
do just as he pleases in all matters whatsoever, 
without restraint of any degree or sort. This 
liberty pure and simple, this absolute liberty, this 
epical liberty that sees no fence, in whatever di- 
rection it looks, between itself and an infinite 
horizon, what are its relations to that state of 
the individual and society which we call order? 
In the present state of human nature what would 
happen if all ^' metes and bounds" were taken 
away, and every one was allowed to be and to do 
just as he pleases? 

What shall be done with the maniacs? Shall 
we allow them free scope to go and come and do 



176 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

as they please — wasting their property, killing 
their neighbors, and spreading terror through the 
community ? or shall they be put under such re- 
straints as will make them safe to themselves 
and to others, even though we have to shut them 
up in a grated room and bind them hand and 
foot? 

What shall be done with the worst class of 
criminals — the robbers and incendiaries and mur- 
derers of society? Shall we respect their liberty 
and say, *^ Go and come, and do exactly what you 
please''? or shall we, in self-defence, put them in 
durance and compel them along the odious way 
to dungeons and gibbets ? 

The imbeciles, must they not have conserv- 
ators and guardians who shall say, ''This you 
may do, and that you must not do?" or must we, 
out of respect to their sacred freedom, allow them 
to throw away a fortune in an hour, burn up 
themselves and their friends, walk off all manner 
of precipices and pull others after them ? * 

No sane person supposes that liberty in its 
largest sense is for such people as madmen and 
fools and gross criminals. They must not be suf- 
fered to do as they please. Their own welfare 
and that of society at large forbid it. And so, 
without remonstrance from the most extravagant 
panegyrist of liberty (always provided he does 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. I77 

not himself belong to the criminal classes), we 
build our prisons, our asylums, and our bedlams, 
and force into them no inconsiderable numbers of 
our fellow-creatures. 

Shall children, though neither mad nor vi- 
cious nor foolish, but simply wayward and inex- 
perienced, shall they be allowed the full sweep of 
their desires ? Shall they be humored to the top 
of their bent? Indulgent as many parents are, and 
fluent in favor of gentle and persuasive ways of 
training the young, still you will hardly find sen- 
sible fathers and mothers who have so far cast oflf 
Solomon as to advocate an entire doing away 
with family government. There must be some 
measure of restraint imposed on even the best 
children. They must hear the voice and see the 
gesture of authority. They must be compelled to 
do what they do not want to do, and to leave 
undone things w^hich they want to do, or in due 
time they will ruin themselves and disfigure so- 
ciety. This is Biblical. This is the lesson of 
experience. Much as is said in praise of glorious 
freedom, and good as the thing sometimes is that 
goes by that name, it is not a thing in all its 
length and breadth for the very young and inex- 
perienced. It must be measured out to them ; it 
must be stinted and pared away on all sides, and 
doled out to them at favorable times, as so much 

The Supreme Tliinss. I 2 



178 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

medicine, or they and all around will rue the 
consequences. 

Are these the only classes to whom absolute 
freedom from all restraint, or anything approach- 
ing it, is not permissible — the madmen, the idiots, 
the outbreaking criminals and the children? How 
is it with the average of grown-up persons ? Nay, 
how is it with the most talented and virtuous of 
them ? Is it well that even they be allowed to do 
in every respect just as they please ? Though it 
be fashionable among us to praise a certain vague 
something called liberty^ and though that word is 
a dear and sacred thing to all our hearts, yet we 
feel bound to say that something very far short of 
unlimited liberty is desirable for even the very 
best specimens of men. Are they gods? Are 
they angels? Are they perfect though reduced 
human copies of the All-wise and All-good? men 
to whose judgment and disposition no exception 
whatever can be taken ? earthly snow-banks that 
have drifted down stainlessly from their native 
skies? They are all sinful and fallible beings; 
almost constantly pleasing to do injudicious and 
wrong and harmful things. They are only pocket 
and somewhat revised editions of the weak-headed 
and wrong-hearted classes just mentioned — men 
who, as everybody has occasion to know, could 
not for one moment stand a comparison with a 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 179 

perfect intellectual or moral standard. Is it not 
a foregone conclusion that such people must be 
checked and governed at every turn ? 

First, they must be restrained of their freedom 
largely by the divine government. God by his 
providence actually prevents men from doing as 
they please. You wish to go to a certain place ; 
in fact, your heart is set upon it. But when the 
set day comes God sends you a storm or a visitor 
or a sickness, so that you cannot fulfil your wish. 
In some such w^ay God is continually hindering 
men from doing as they please. He overrules 
their favorite plans ; puts and keeps them in 
places which they do not want to occupy ; forces 
them to work when they want to rest ; forces 
them to be quiet when they want to be active ; 
gives them sickness when nothing will content 
them but health, and poverty when nothing will 
content them but riches, and obscurity when 
nothing will content them but celebrity ; in 
short, binds them up in an invincible system of 
restraints. Shall any of us say that this is not 
well? Faith and reason say that it is better 
than unbounded liberty. It is better to have our 
course of life shaped by an All-wise and good 
Providence than by our own short-sighted and 
depraved wishes. 

And there is another class of restraints to 



l8o THE SUPREME THINGS.^ 

which God subjects all men, viz., moral restraints. 
You want to do a certain thing ; your heart is set 
on doing it You want to make an unrighteous 
gain, to speak an unrighteous word, to live an 
impenitent and selfish life. The State wants to 
turn thief and repudiate its bonds, which have 
been consecrated and put forth to widows and 
orphans with solemnities almost religious. Then 
God appears with his law and says, "Thou shalt 
not. Do it, and thou shalt have me for an ene- 
my." So you are afraid and forbear. The au- 
thority of God prevents your doing as you please, 
compels you to do as he pleases, abridges your 
liberty. So it is with all of us. We, in our folly 
or our sin, want to do, but dare not ; for God 
stands in our path with the drawn sword of his 
threatening. Not a particle of physical force is 
brought to bear upon us ; but there is in its stead 
a commanding moral force which imprisons our 
liberty as decisively as would the grasp of some 
giant hand. When the bondman is bidden away 
to the field he can, perhaps, slink away and idle 
out the day in his cabin ; only he will have to 
take the consequences in penal suffering ; and it 
is this fact that makes him a bondman. When 
God bids us to do so and so we can neglect to do 
as we are bidden, but we shall have to take penal 
consequences ; and this fact makes us bondmen 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. l8l 

of God. It is a hard name, has a most unpleasant 
sound; but the thing itself is good, is best, though 
we may not call it by the delightful name of lib- 
erty. It is much better for us than pure liberty 
would be. Restraints are laid on us for our good 
and the general good ; they are to keep us from 
courses hurtful to ourselves and to those about us; 
and were they altogether taken off from men, 
their absence would turn Christendom into hea- 
thendom as well as into freedom. Freedom from 
the restraints of God's providential and moral 
governments means for society a terrible bedlam 
of mistake and sin. 

Again, men need to be restrained of their 
liberty by civil government. This sort of gov- 
ernment is warranted and appointed by God. It 
exists everywhere, in one form or another, by an 
invincible necessity of society. It forges chains 
and builds prisons to triumph over the liberty of 
orreat offenders. It enacts fines and disfranchise- 
ments to triumph over the liberty of smaller of- 
fenders. It says to its subjects that they must 
pay so much towards its support; and nine out of 
ten do not want to pay, and would not, save to 
keep their goods and chattels from being dis- 
trained. It marks out tedious and expensive 
forms for almost all sorts of business trans- 
actions, and obliges men to conform to them 



l82 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

under penalties, though the necessity for them is 
made by rogues, and honest men feel that for 
themselves they are equally unnecessary and op- 
pressive. The multifarious regulations of town 
and county and state and nation crowd on us at 
almost every step; and if w^e regard liberty as 
consisting in being left to do just as we please, it 
is precious little liberty that we have. But civil 
government is a good thing, nevertheless. Though 
it restrains and compels us like a master, we are 
compelled to admit that we cannot do without it. 
Without it society would run on the rocks and go 
to pieces. There are no breakers quite as bad 
as anarchy and anarchists. Kings are not the 
only persons who have occasion to fear them, but 
every craft, however humble, that sails the seas. 
Of the two, order is better than liberty. Multi- 
tudes who care not at all for the laws of God can 
be made afraid of the laws of the land; and for 
their sake all others must submit to the hamper- 
ing, and if you please the servitude of general laws. 

Further, men need to be restrained of their 
freedom by public opinion and usage. 

Civil government is of too coarse a nature to 
touch many parts of our conduct. Such parts are 
largely reached by another restraining and com- 
pelling power. What will people think of it? 
What is the practice in society ? How are people 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 183 

accustomed to do ? Such questions as these are 
great masters. Caesar was never so masterful. 
His rule was always tempered by at least the fear 
of assassination. But who is going to assassinate 
public opinion and the usages of society? So 
these things govern people with a mighty sceptre. 
What we want to do we dare not do because of 
them. What we do not want to do we neverthe- 
less do because of them. Men whom no law of 
God binds with salutary restraint are, not seldom, 
timid and tremulous as doves before public opin- 
ion and usage; and there are very few indeed who 
do not adopt modes of living, dress, speech, occu- 
pation, contrary to their preferences, out of defer- 
ence to these imperious and capricious monarchs. 
Ask them why they do it, and perhaps they will 
have the frankness to say, *'I am obliged to; 
everybody does it." Ask them why they do not 
do it, and perhaps they will be frank enough to 
say, '' I must not; it is against public sentiment." 
So they wear a yoke. So they are restrained of 
their liberty. And it is well that they should be. 
To a certain extent it is well that deference 
should be paid to the general sentiment and prac- 
tice of the community. In things indifferent, in 
matters of mere expediency, we shall do well to 
go no small lengths in yielding our individual 
tastes and wishes so as to conform to the views 



l84 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

and habits that prevail about ns. We may go 
too far; we may yield much when we should 
yield little; there are points of conscience and 
righteousness in which we should yield not at 
all. Still, there is a very large field of our affairs 
that ought to submit to regulation by current 
views and usages; and the man is little less than 
insane as well as a bit unrighteous who, consult- 
ing merely his own humor, flouts his contradic- 
tions and defiances on many points, say of dress 
and manners, in the face of the rest of mankind. 
Much as you prefer the old Roman toga, and to 
recline at your meals, you had better accommodate 
yourself to the ways of the nineteenth century. 
It is not classical to make yourself ridiculous. 

Moreover, men need to be restrained of their 
freedom by their own reasons and consciences. 

Our wishes are often opposed to our best judg- 
ment and sense of duty. Doing as we please is 
doing as we are sensible we had better not and 
ought not. Then our reasons and our consciences 
are a restraint upon us. They whisper vmst iiots 
in our ears; perhaps in so imperative a way that 
we dare not proceed. If we proceed, it is with 
hesitation and wretchedness, and not to so great 
length as we should otherwise do. All men are un- 
der these checks and bonds from within, especially 
Christian men. Their o:reat characteristic is that 



the: supreme freedom. 185 

they submit their natural propensities and wishes 
to the criticism of reason and conscience, and, in 
cases where the criticism is unfavorable, are ac- 
customed to give up the doing as they please for 
the doing as they ought or as it would be wise to 
do. They are not merely put under restraints by 
the moral sense: they are put under victorious 
restraints. Their pleasure is actually set aside 
by their duty, in case of a collision between the 
two. In short, they are ruled, tied up to certain 
courses of living which they do not always want 
to take; to say the truth frankly, they are cur- 
tailed of their liberty. By degrees, as their 
Christian character ripens, what they please to do 
grows to coincide more and more with what they 
ought to do; but the time never comes to the 
good man in this world when his pleasure and his 
duty are always identical. The desire will often 
point one way while religion points another. 
Then comes the struggle, the victory, and the 
subjugation. The man gives up his liberty for 
the sake of that far better thing, his religion. 
And it is a blessed exchange. Heavenly order is 
wonderfully better than having his own short- 
sighted and sinful way. 

It seems, therefore, that, in the present state of 
human nature, it has to be subjected to a great 
variety of restraints from within and without, 



l86 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

else society would go into unhingement and chaos 
directly; as much so as a watch would if each part 
should issue a declaration of independence and 
undertake to move without reference to any other 
part; as much so as would the solar system if 
each planet should go its way without regard to 
any other member of the system, only heeding 
the tendencies within itself. Liberty in the lar- 
gest sense of the term, as being allowance to do as 
one pleases, is incompatible with perfect order 
among any but perfect beings. Heaven above is 
the only place where this sort of liberty would 
not fill society with trouble. There, where every 
one pleases to do what is right, and invariably so 
pleases — there, where no one is negligent or self- 
ish or has the least shadow of a disposition to 
trespass on the rights of others — such unbounded 
freedom is safe. Here, in this world with which 
Satan has so much to do, and which is so full of 
blind and unscrupulous self-seeking, it would be 
certain to prove the parent of intolerable dis- 
orders. The day when heaven should proclaim 
such a liberty as that would ''burn as an oven," 
and burn blue. It would set the calendar itself 
on fire. 

And yet, as has already been implied, we know 
of a way in w^hich even such a liberty can be 
gradually reconciled to still higher degrees of 






THE SUPREME FREEDOM. 187 

order than the world has ever yet seen. Indeed 
there is no limit to the amount of order which 
this way can secure in connection with that very 
largest liberty that has no horizon. It may be 
made to perpetually approach that order that 
reigns in heaven, may be made to approach it 
by means of that epical and colossal liberty it- 
self. That is, this liberty shall not only be con- 
sistent with the order, but shall positively pro- 
mote it. Shall we briefly describe and illustrate 
this method? 

Each man is a state within himself. What 
lyouis XIV. affirmed of himself I affirm of every 
man. His conscience, his intellect, his will, his 
heart, with their various faculties and passions 
and tendencies, are the population of this interior 
body politic ; and a very stiff*-necked and disor- 
derly population it is apt to be, too. It must be 
reduced to order ; each of the various principles 
has its own distinct function and place, and must 
be made to take and keep them ; each must be 
made to hold itself in just subordination, and to 
develop itself according to certain appropriate 
laws and along certain prescribed orbits. At the 
same time it is very desirable that the man should 
have freedom ; that he should be allowed to do as 
he pleases, just as far as the interests of order will 
allow. If it is possible to secure this indispensa- 



l88 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

ble order and yet allow the man to do perfectly as 
he pleases, it is desirable that it should be done. 
Accordingly, this is the problem that God pro- 
poses to himself in reference to every person : to 
give him just as much freedom in order as pos- 
sible. How much is possible ? It is plain that if 
God can so work on a man's heart that all right 
and wise and orderly things shall please him, 
then he can have perfect liberty without detri- 
ment to the interests of order. One who never 
wants to do anything out of the way needs no 
restraints. He may do altogether as he pleases. 
Now God can give him this right-preferring and 
order-loving disposition : first the seed, then the 
blade and ear, and then the full corn in the ear : 
first the new heart by Jesus Christ and his gospel, 
and then that new heart gradually ripened by the 
Holy Spirit and the various ministries of the 
Christian economy. So what God aims at for 
every person is perfect liberty in perfect order. 
And his way of securing this object is by a Chris- 
tian conversion carried forward, stage after stage, 
into complete sanctification. 

Such is the divine method for securing com- 
plete liberty with complete order in the individ- 
ual. This has only to go widening out from in- 
dividual to individual, till a prevailing Christian 
tone is given to the sentiments of the people at 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. l8g 

large, to lay a sufficient foundation for public lib- 
erty and order. For whoever maintains Christian 
order within will not trample on Christian order 
without. Whoever chooses only righteous and 
orderly things in his own heart will certainly 
choose nothing else in society. If every person 
in a state should do only such things as accord 
with the rights and privileges of all others, there 
would be perfect order ; and if every person could 
do whatever he pleases to do, there would be per- 
fect liberty ; and the two would be mutually rec- 
onciled when all should be pleased to do only 
such things as accord with the rights and privi- 
leges of others. To this point the diffusion of the 
gospel is ever pushing the community. Push 
harder, O mighty gospel, for we weary with 
waiting through the long centuries! But we are 
not obliged to wait till that point is reached and 
religion has actually enthroned itself in every citi- 
zen. It is sufficient if enough of such enthrone- 
ments can be secured to exert such a controlling 
influence on the behavior of the people that, on 
the whole, it can be called a Christian people. 
Then they can be safely trusted with free institu- 
tions. Then they may be left to make their own 
laws and elect their own magistrates. They shall 
manage their own affairs very much as they 
please, and yet show as pleasant an example of 



igO THK SUPREME THINGS. 

well-poised and orderly behavior as if they were 
living under the gleam of bayonets and proclama- 
tion of martial law. 

This is the method, and the only reliable one. 
If any one tells you that the good blood and 
steady temperament of the x\nglo-Saxon is a suf- 
ficient basis and guaranty for united liberty and 
order, tell him he imposes on himself. If any 
should vaunt the wonderful dynamics of popular 
education, and declare that able to sustain in 
permanent quiet and buoyant equilibrium the 
great pressure of free institutions, hasten to assure 
him that he is mistaken. If any is disposed to 
think that everything depends on what sort of a 
paper constitution a people has, and avers that 
such an instrument may be so sagely and splen- 
didly drawn as to be a self-perpetuating fountain 
of both liberty and order, tell him that as long as 
there is such a word as Mexico on the map of the 
world you will know better. In short, tell all 
political and social visionaries that there is but 
one way of reconciling public liberty with public 
order, and holding it reconciled, and that is by 
the diffusion of evangelical religion, in the way 
of a Christian conversion and sanctification that 
pass from person to person, till a controlling 
power in the state is gained. In this way the 
largest liberty and the largest order can stand 



THE SUPREME FREEDOM. I9I 

together in delightful and stable wedlock. Each 
shall illumine and set oflf the other. A double 
star shall shine as a single glory in the firma- 
ment. 

But in any other way this is impossible : all 
efforts, however great in degree and happily cir- 
cumstanced, will come to nothing. The bridge 
will not set one safely across. The boat is a 
leaky one which will sink before one can touch 
the shore. I mean that wonderful old English 
blood to which so much vigorous steadiness is 
credited. I mean the schools and colleges and 
books and papers sown across the land as seed- 
grain is sown across the field. I mean paper con- 
stitutions, however sagely drafted, skilfully en- 
gineered, and mighty in their promises. I mean 
great men, warriors and statesmen it may be, 
who rise up now and then in times of public peril 
and work great feats of temporary salvation for 
distressed states. None of these will answer the 
purpose of a country that wants to be at the 
same time greatly free and greatly well regulated. 
Such a country must be Christian. Christianity 
must dominate its great political and social forces. 
And when this is done it will be just as impossi- 
ble for that country not to be free as it would be 
for it to turn thief and repudiate its bonds. 



X 



Tte hvTm^ Klimax. 



13 



THE ASCENT OF HOLINESS. 
THE DESCENT OF SIN. 



i 



THE SUPREME CLIMAX. 19^ 



X,—THE SUPREME CLIMAX. 

If one wishes to show a friend a series of pros- 
pects of unequal beauty so as to make the greatest 
impression and give the greatest pleasure, expe- 
rience teaches that it is important in what order 
the prospects are presented. Shall we take our 
visitor to see first the very best landscape of all, 
and then the next lower in point of interest, and 
then the next lower still, and so on till we come 
at last to the very poorest ? We know human 
nature and the natural order of things too well- 
It would sacrifice for our friend half the pleasure 
and usefulness of the excursion. We will go first 
to the least attractive scene. The other scenes 
shall follow in such order that the interest shall 
grow at every step. And we will close and crown 
the exhibition w^ith the view which is confessedly 
the finest in the whole neighborhood; so that the 
stranger may go home with such a glory of de- 
lightful vision in his eye as we would like to 
have linger in his memory. 

The experience of the young in certain re- 
spects (I do not say in all respects) is intrinsically 
pleasanter than that of the aged. In certain par- 
ticulars the young are constantly ascending, the 



196 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

old as constantly descending: the one moving 
from little to much, the other from much to little. 
Every day gives the one some new strength, some 
new skill, some new mental vigor and knowledge, 
some new influence in the world. It is with only 
a very little of these that the infant sets out; but 
it is with him a constant process of expansion 
and improvement till, at manhood, the little has 
become much. On the contrary, the aged man, 
beginning with the much of manhood, is contin- 
ually wasting away into the little of infancy. 
Every day instead of building him up is pulling 
him down. His muscular vigor, his strength of 
couGtitution, his mental aptness for the various 
pursuits of life, his circle of friends, his conse- 
quence to the public, are daily tending to narrower 
and narrower limits. What John the Baptist said 
of Christ the old must say of the young, ''He 
must increase, but I must decrease." Age has, or 
may have, its advantages over youth; but it must 
be confessed that in the particulars just men- 
tioned youth has the best of it. It is intrinsically 
a brighter and better thing to feel that life is grow- 
ing fresher and stronger with every pulse than to 
feel that it is weakening and withering at every 
step. We are never, or next to never, willing to 
have the flow of our tide turn into the ebb, and 
add patch after patch of sandy waste to our lives. 



the; supreme cumax. 197 

Suppose a man of wealth. With or without 
fault of his, a decay in his circumstances begins. 
Every year finds him with less than the last. 
Evil tidings follow evil tidings ; fountain after 
fountain of income dries up; luxuries drop away 
one by one, and are followed by the comforts; 
until at last the much has dwindled into a mere 
pittance. Such a sinking process as this is a 
great trial. How gladly would the man exchange 
his downward movement from much to little for 
a reverse movement from little to much. Born to 
riches and gradually dragged down to poverty, he 
feels that it would have been a far pleasanter and 
more desirable experience could he have begun 
' ' with poverty and climbed gradually to riches. 
Then the years would have been a succession 
of successes; now they are a succession of de- 
feats. Field added to field, house to house, bond 
to bond ; each year, flushed with the realized 
gains of the past and w^th the expected gains of 
the future, taking stand above its predecessor; 
annexation mounting on the shoulders of annexa- 
tion to more exhilarating airs and wider pros- 
pects — surely this w^ould be a process to be envied 
compared with that melancholy ''lower and lower 
still" through which he is now being dragged. 

Or suppose the w^ord 'Svealth" in the illus- 
tration to read ''honor." Beginning with a 



198 THE supkkme: things. 

splendid reputation and a sun on the meridian, all 
after movement of the man is towards dimness 
and setting. Know you no such instance? To- 
day his name floated aloft, almost out of sight on 
the tempest of acclamations; next month by no 
means quite so near the stars; a few months later 
settled down into a region of the air quite terres- 
trial and within view of ordinary mortals; and at 
last, like a wounded and collapsing balloon, just 
grazing the ground. A very trying process this — 
this passing from much to little of honor — a pro- 
cess that sometimes breaks men's hearts. It is a 
much brighter and happier thing to begin with 
the little and rise gradually to the much — to begin 
with grazing the ground and end with grazing 
the stars. Ask the paling and sinking general or 
politician which experience he would prefer, the 
ascending or the descending, and see how prompt- 
ly his answer will come back. 

Let us pass on to a higher field. We begin 
life with not even a little virtue. It is nothing, 
less than nothing, a great negative quantity. 
But w^e will do ourselves the courtesy of assum- 
ing that we start in life with a very little real 
goodness. By the side of this there is a little 
happiness, a very little, of such low and feeble 
sort as to scarcely exceed that of an oyster. But 
from this little virtue and little happiness we may 



THE SUPREME CLIMAX. 199 

gradually push our way forward to much. With 
- excelsior for our motto, and the grace of God for 
our helper, every year may find us wiser, happier, 
' .and better than its predecessor did, till we shine 
brightly in the eyes of both earth and heaven^ 
As the spark by fanning is at last expanded into 
a flame that can be seen afar, as the child by 
proper food and training at last becomes a man in 
strength and stature, so the little virtue may by 
certain methods be kept to a course of growth to 
which every day shall add something: and virtue 
can add itself to virtue in splendid accumulation 
through all waxing and waning moons till some 
Pope can sing of this Berkeley, ''To Berkeley 
every virtue under heaven." And his happiness 
need not lag behind his goodness. The one may 
hold the other by the hand and keep step with it 
on that climax path from little to much. See the 
twin march going on from day to day — up and still 
up into serener airs and more commanding pros- 
pects ! How satisfying, how exhilarating, must 
be a sense of such a ''better and better " as this ! 
Is It a pleasant thing for one to feel that the 
course of his pecuniary affairs, or of his reputa- 
tion or of his health or of his intellect, is from 
lower to hio:her and from little to much ? A 
much pleasanter and brighter thing it surely is to 
feel that goodness and happiness are on their way 



200 THK SUl^RKME THINGS. 

from a spark to a sun, that these greatest of all 
interests are a stream ever widening and deepen- 
ing as it flows towards a shoreless sea. And what 
must it be to feel that we are on the reverse 
course, and going down and still down as some 
people do and as Satan has done for thousands of 
years ! Is he happy as he sees himself settling 
from darkness to darkness — the distant past for a 
while a flight of bright steps up, the future a 
flight of black steps down ? Worse and worse — 
think of it. Wretcheder and wretcheder — think of 
it. Less and less of a blessing or more and more 
of a curse — think of it. What a companion- 
thought to close one's eyes upon at night and 
open them upon in the morning and to see star- 
ing at us with great mournful eyes at every turn 
and lull of the business of the day ! Every day is 
a new defeat, every day loses a new province, 
every day some new Vicksburg of his surrenders 
and promises a Port Hudson for to-morrow; and 
so the melancholy road of mortification and dis- 
couragement and disaster goes sinking, perhaps 
on a straight line and perhaps on a crooked one, 
into the very bowels of the earth. A sad thing to 
see and a sadder thing to experience — especially 
as contrasted with that hopeful, exhilarating as- 
cent out of the earth through stage after stage of 
ever-improving condition into the purest and 



THK SUPREME CLIxMAX. 20I 

sunniest regions of religion and happiness. Now 
God be praised that this latter path, with its 
cheerful bells of remembrance and promise sweet- 
ly chiming through the ever-brightening sun- 
shine, is possible to us. May God avert us from 
that other descending path, with its mournful 
bells chiming dirges through the ever-deepening 
darkness ! 

The best conceivable state in regard to char- 
acter, happiness, and usefulness is, of course, 
neither that of ascent nor descent, but that per- 
fectly stationary state which God himself occu- 
pies — that of an absolutely perfect being to whom 
no improvement is possible. But after this best 
conceivable state, which is inaccessible to us, the 
next in desirableness is that of going from 
strength to strength. To go from money to 
money, or from honor to honor, or from health 
and strength of body to the same — why, people 
do seriously doubt the advantage of it for some; 
and we seem to know cases in which these sorts 
of ascent have been like the ascent of the crim- 
inal to the gallows. But if there is one thing 
which all theory and all experience unite in 
approving and recommending, without a single 
whisper of dissent from any quarter, it is this in- 
clined plane of solid sunlight sloping upward and 
ever upward towards heaven — this going from 



202 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

strength to strength in the matter of character, 
usefulness, and happiness. And if there is one 
thing which no man from sunrise to sunset dare 
open his mouth in favor of, it is this inclined 
plane of solid darkness sloping downward and 
ever downward towards hell — this going from 
weakness to weakness, morally and religiously. 
Satan himself, with all his audacity, does not 
say a direct word in its behalf. He invariably 
seeks to people the descending road by indirec- 
tion. Who waits for the great enemy to sum- 
mon up courage enough to look in the sun's eye 
and in man's and say, // is good to grozv worse and 
worse^ will wait for ever. It is true that he would 
have to wait as long for the fiend to say, // is 
good to grow better and better ; but we can all say 
that for ourselves, and do say it at full lungs and 
with every faculty of reason and conscience and 
observation put into the saying. 

It is one of the advantages of the course that 
is upward that it may be constant^ and it is one of 
the disadvantages of the course that is downward 
that it possesses the same quality. Am I fronted 
in the right direction, and is it from strength to 
strength I am going? Then there is no need of 
stoppages. Much less is there occasion for any 
backward movement. Pauses and retrogressions I 
may actually make, but they are not compulsory. 



THE SUPREME CUMAX. 203 

I can keep up that cheerful upward movement 
without any break whatever till I have accom- 
plished the whole distance from little to much. 
Resting in religion does not refresh. Struggle 
against religious obstacles is itself religious pro- 
gress. So my course from strength to strength 
need not be like that of a traveller to some dis- 
tant city who must stop for food and stop for 
sleep and stop for trains, and perhaps sometimes 
retrace his steps to recover the right path; it may 
rather resemble the course of those shining trav- 
ellers in the sky who, despite all appearances, 
are always moving right onward through clear- 
ness and through cloud, whatever happens be- 
neath them and whatever happens among them. 

Am I fronting in the wrong direction, and is 
it from weakness to weakness or from sinful- 
ness to sinfulness that I am going? My motion 
here, too, may be constant. My downward travel 
may be kept up without the slightest intermission 
till I have passed over the whole distance from 
the much to the little. Even the night need not 
break my journey; for the influences and mo- 
menta of my waking hours can follow me through 
the hours of sleep. And so through day and 
night, through summer and winter, through all 
my years, I may be forging downward without 
respite and w4th ever-accelerated speed. 



a04 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

It is another advantage of the upward course 
of character that it can be rapid as well as con- 
stant; and as a great disadvantage to the down- 
ward course that it can have the same quality. 
Character may be made to improve very fast, and 
it may decline as fast. Usually it moves slowly 
and with difficulty towards the higher degrees of 
virtue, but it need not do so. We see occasion- 
ally great progress made in little time, virtues, 
usefulness, and enjoyments accumulating so swiftly 
as to call forth the admiration of all beholders. 
What is done now and then might be done all the 
while. If I choose and have resolution enough 
to *' press towards the mark," I may go up the 
shining way like a fleet courser who rather flies 
than runs. And, if I choose and have audacity 
enough to press downward as Paul pressed up- 
ward, I shall have flashing speed of descent as he 
had of ascent, and shall accumulate sin, perni- 
ciousness, and sorrow to the shocked astonish- 
ment of all beholders. 

And it is another thing in favor of going from 
strength to strength that it can be perpetual as 
well as constant and rapid, and so carry one to 
indefinite heights of virtuous and happy attain- 
ment; and as much against the going from weak 
ness to weakness that it too can be permanent 
and so carry one to indefinite depths of sinfulness 



THE SUPREME CLIMAX. 205 

and wretchedness. In going from more to more, 
or from less to less, in such matters as health, 
estate, reputation, we are sure after a while to 
bring up against an insuperable barrier — we can- 
not get to be any richer or poorer, any more 
healthy or sickly, any more famous or infamous. 
But in the matter of character the path stretches 
indefinitely up and down. We can travel in 
either direction constantly and rapidly and yet 
never come to an end. Virtue can go on increas- 
ing in strength and brightness, and so in happi- 
ness and usefulness, world without end. On the 
other hand sin can go on increasing in strength 
and darkness, and so in wretchedness and harm- 
fulness, world without end. On the one hand 
we have from little to much, and from much to 
more, and so on up in endless advance towards 
most; on the other hand we have from little to 
less, and from less to still less, and so on down- 
ward in endless decline towards the least. And 
this indefinite prolongation of the shining way up 
through heaven towards God the absolute perfec- 
tion is one of the qualities of it that sets all the 
kingdom of God to music; and that similar in- 
definite extension of the dark way down through 
hell towards the blackest and wretchedest and 
worst, is the chief quality of it that shall fill the 
kingdom of Satan with weeping and wailing. 



2o6 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

God is stationary; man is moving — moving 
upward according to nature or moving downward 
according to nature; getting better, happier, and 
more useful, or getting worse and worse in these 
respects. What is my case? If, on examination 
had, I discover that I am one of those who go 
from weakness to weakness instead of from 
strength to strength, is there any help for me? 
My case is bad, but not hopeless. My travel is 
still in its earlier stages. Irresistible momentum 
has not yet been acquired. The downward path 
can be forsaken and must be. This everlasting 
sinking, sinking till one passes out of sight must 
be stopped — and the sooner the better. That 
everlasting rising, rising till one passes out of 
sight among the stars must be achieved— and the 
sooner the better. I mean a revolution. If there 
is grace in heaven and power on earth, I will, at 
all costs, come to front and move another way. 
That this is necessary is evident. That it is pos- 
sible is proved by the experience of millions. I, 
too, God helping me, will face about and go sub- 
limely from strength to strength till I appear in 
Zion before God. 



i 



XI. 



' Tte kpreme 




CONTACT WITH CHRIST. 



THE SUPREME REMEDY, 20g 



XL— THE SUPREME REMEDY. 

kxx, the sick persons in Palestine were not 
healed by Christ. Many a fever burned on and 
quite consumed people, notwithstanding the pres- 
ence of the great Healer in the country. Many a 
consumption went on wasting and debilitating 
with racking coughs and nocturnal sweats; many 
a. dropsy continued to swell and relax the solids 
into mortification ; many an insanity went on 
muttering or raving among the tombs or misera- 
ble homes ; many a blindness, deafness, dumb- 
ness, lameness, continued to cut off men from the 
occupations and enjoyments of life. 

Only those who came into certain close rela- 
tions to Christ found healing virtue passing forth 
from him upon them. The centurion applied \o 
Jesus in behalf of his son, and so that son was 
healed. The funeral procession ;a/^/ Jesus, and so 
the widowed mother got back her boy to life. 
The blind man was found by the roadside where 
Jesus was passing, and anxiously cried in his ear, 
''Thou son of David, have mercy on me!" and 
so recovered sight. Lepers came within hearing 
distance and asked mercy, and so went and 

Supreme TliingB. \A 



2IO THE SUPREME THINGS. 

showed themselves to the priest as clean men. 
Deaf men found their way into his presence, and 
received his finger into their ears, and so became 
able to hear. Friends brought the palsied man 
on his bed, and broke up the roof and let him 
down before Jesus, and so he took up his bed and 
walked. The woman who for twelve years had 
vainly spent all her living on physicians, came 
up behind him and touched his garment, and so 
was cured of her plague. Jesus made his appear- 
ance in the land of Gennesaret, and then the 
people sent into all that country and brought to 
him all that were diseased, and besought him 
that they might only touch the hem of his gar- 
ment, and as many as touched were made per- 
fectly whole. Thus it was that cures were ef- 
fected. Disabled men looked or listened till they 
received faith ; they managed to find their way 
into the presence of Christ and place themselves 
in, as it were, contact with his power, or at least 
through friends to make formal application to 
him for healing ; in this way he took effect as a 
miraculous physician. Such sick persons as re- 
mained at home, and did not send to him ; such 
persons as did nothing for themselves, and for 
whom their friends did nothing to put them into 
a certain sort of connection with Christ, remained 
unhealed bv him. 



THE SUPREME REMEDY. 211 

Of course this necessity for establishing a cer- 
tain close outward relation to Christ in order to 
being cured often put sick and disabled persons 
and their friends to no small trouble. What pains 
the sick of the palsy and his friends were at as 
his bed threaded street after street and at last 
descended through the roof into the presence of 
Jesus ! How the nobleman had to turn wayfarer, 
and post in anxious haste all the way from Caper- 
naum to Cana and hunt up the pilgrim Saviour, 
and beg him to come down ere the child should 
die ! That Syrophoenician woman whose daugh- 
ter was grievously tormented with a devil, how 
she had to forsake her home and push her way 
among unwilling disciples, and cry after him who 
could help her till she had, so to speak, enforced 
attention ; and when she had secured notice, how 
she had still to argue her cause pathetically before 
Jesus would take the children's bread and cast it 
to dogs ! It is possible that blind Bartimaeus hap- 
pened to be sitting by the wayside when Jesus 
passed, and so was at no pains to approach him : 
but this much is certain, that the beggar had to 
turn beggar in earnest and make the highway 
resound with many piteous calls for help, wuth 
many a ''Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy 
on me !'' before the glorious outer world shone in 
through his rejoicing eyelids. What a bustling, 



213 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

hurrying, strenuous time was that in Gennesaret ! 
and how certain it is that when on the arrival of 
Jesus the people ran through that whole region 
and carried about in beds those that were sick 
where they heard he was, and wheresoever he 
entered, into villages or cities or country, laid 
the sick in the streets and besought him that they 
might touch if it were but the border of his gar- 
ment — I say how certain is it that during this 
busy, bustling time not a few put themselves 
vastly out of their way, and freely and painfully 
expended time and strength to bring themselves 
and friends within the presence of Christ's mirac- 
ulous agency. Men to whom every motion was 
a pain tottered along for miles ; persons whose 
nerves shook at the sound of a muflfled step across 
their chamber summoned fortitude, and were 
jolted along on the shoulders of men. People to 
whom in their best days the thought of a crowd 
was painful, found themselves, as blind or lame 
or debilitated or ulcerated, pushed and elbowed 
unceremoniously in every direction amid the 
roaring and rushing multitudes. They had to 
do and endure after this manner,^ or go without 
healing. 

Is there any reason to suppose that those an- 
cient beneficiaries of Christ felt any disposition to 
complain of the terms on which they received 



help? We hardly think that it ever occurred to 
them to fret and murmur after this manner : 
''Why does he not go about in person to all these 
sick homes and command the sickness away ? Or 
rather, why does he not say, once for all, the 
mighty word which in a moment, and without his 
or our moving a step, could carry restoration and 
joy to all these afflicted homes?" They probably 
never thought of such a folly. It was joyful 
enough for them if they could be healed on any 
terms. Those w^ho went back with opened eyes 
or restored limbs or pulse in which no debilita- 
ting fever burned and leaped had nothing to say 
or to feel about the unreasonableness of so much 
pains and effort having been required of them to 
gain their cure. It was gained ; that was the 
main thing. And if ever the thought of their 
previous painstaking in behalf of the blessing 
crossed their minds, it was to rejoice that their 
efforts had been so gloriously successful, and that 
so great a blessing had, by God's goodness, been 
so cheaply obtained. 

Now the idea is sometimes entertained 
(perhaps clearly and fully, perhaps dimly and 
fractionally) that the mere fact that Jesus lived 
and died in Judaea some centuries ago is enough 
to spiritually heal and everlastingly save the 
whole world of mankind. The Saviour so good 



214 ^HE SUPREME THINGS. 

and so mighty will not suffer any to perish. If 
men will not go to him, he will come to them. 
If they will not apply to him, he will magnani- 
mously help them without application. This 
seems to such persons the highest style of Sa- 
viour. In their minds it is hardly reconcilable 
with supreme benevolence, not to say justice, that 
the method of salvation should be otherwise; and 
their thoughts, if not words, complainingly ask 
how it is possible that God should leave in the 
hands of men, to save or throw away at their 
option, such a tremendous deposit as the welfare 
of the soul for an eternity. Let these questioners 
look here: look how it happened to bodily sick 
men when Christ was on the earth. Let them 
see that by no means were all of them healed by 
the great Physician. Let them notice that only 
those were cured who wxre brought into certain 
close voluntary relations to him; relations some- 
times costing great effort and sacrifices for their 
establishment. The rest got no benefit whatever 
from his curing faculty, though it was of the 
most unlimited and dazzling description. Who 
complains that this was wrong? Who sees injus- 
tice in such a fact ? Not we, surely. It is enough, 
we say, if cure was accessible to them on such 
feasible conditions. What ground of complaint, 
then, if it should prove that the mere fact of a 



THE SUPREME REMEDY. 215 

Saviour living and dying in the world is not 
enough to heal the spiritually sick and disabled ? 
if it should prove that in order to soul-healing 
and salvation it is necessary that sinners come 
into certain close voluntary relations to Christ, 
for the securing of which they, and perhaps their 
friends, will have to bestir themselves anxiously 
and painfully ? if it should prove that sinners 
lying at their ease, or rather at their distress, and 
going not forth to hunt up and bespeak the help 
of the miraculous Christ, even at the cost of large 
eflforts and sacrifices, must expect to go unpar- 
doned and unrenewed ? What is there unreason- 
able in men's being required to exert themselves 
somewhat for the kingdom of heaven? Ought 
not they to be thankful to know that they can 
obtain so great a blessing on any feasible condi- 
tions? Nay, let us look at that old history and 
be instructed. When we see multitudes of fevers 
and dropsies and leprosies and other ills remain- 
ing uncured among the homes of Judaea, though 
Jesus was abroad in the land, let us deem it alto- 
gether credible that, although Jesus and his gos- 
pel are among us now, multitudes of sinners may 
go uncured and unsaved by their power. When 
we see that it was only such invalids as placed 
themselves in the very presence of Jesus, or at 
least made pointed application to him for help, 



2i6 the: suprkme things. 

who had help actually given them, let us set it 
down as quite possible that it will be only such 
sick souls as come close to Christ and make 
pointed application to him for cure and salvation 
who will succeed in obtaining it When we see 
that some of those who applied of old to Jesus, 
and not unfrequently their friends also, had to put 
themselves greatly out of their way and act stren- 
uously in order to establish the necessary sort of 
connection with the great Healer of the body, let 
us say to ourselves, " Surely it may be that those 
sinners, and their friends also, who apply for help 
to the great Healer of the soul will find it ne- 
cessary to exert themselves very considerably and 
anxiously in order to make an effective applica- 
tion; and it may be, too, that there would be 
nothing unreasonable in their having to 'strive 
to enter at the strait gate.' " 

In advance of all knowledge of the actual 
method of curing and saving sinners, one, on 
sight of that old-time history, might declare it 
altogether credible and reasonable that Christ has 
conditioned his good offices in the behalf of sin- 
ners on their voluntarily coming close to him 
in penitent, earnest, often laborious application 
for help. But what are the actual facts of the 
case ? Does the Bible come to us with the infor- 
mation that the bare fact that Christ and his 



THE SUPRKMK REMEDY. 217 

gospel are in the world as a great sin-curing and 
soul-saving power is enough to secure the pardon 
and holiness and salvation of all its inhabitants? 
Society does not look like it; that is certain; and, 
what is of quite as much consequence, the Bible 
looks even less like it Looking there, you see a 
Judas that might better never have been born; a 
rich man lifting up his eyes in hell; a strait gate 
and narrow way leading unto life, and few find- 
ing them; goats standing on the left hand of the 
Judge at the final judgment, and bidden, "De- 
part." Sadly true is it that in the most Christian 
of lands many individuals, and whole communities 
even, seem to get no good out of the great Christ 
who might cure and save them all. They live 
and die in their sins. The evil disease goes on 
burning and wasting in them till they perish. 
Day after day their fever, their leprosy, their con- 
sumption, gathers strength and pushes them 
remorselessly from bad to worse, till it is all over 
with them. And this although Christ and his 
gospel are abroad in our streets for the very pur- 
pose of helping just such cases as these; carrying 
about with him through our Galilees and Naza- 
reths, as well as our Judaeas and Jerusalems, a 
magnificent ability and disposition to cure and 
save everybody. 

What are the revealed facts of the case ? The 



2i8 the; supreme things. 

first of these facts is, as has been said, that by no 
means all sick souls are cured and saved by- 
Christ. Another is that it is only such souls as 
will come close to him and make application to 
him, in the act of repenting and believing, in 
whose behalf he interferes with his mighty heal- 
ing and saving power. Consult the Scriptures, 
and you will find this point as clear as the other. 
There is no elasticity whatever about the con- 
ditions on which Jesus bestows his great help. 
They will not stretch to suit this man's taste nor 
shrink to suit that man's. Come close to Christ 
and keep close to him. Apply to him for what 
you need and keep applying. Touch him — at 
least the hem of his garment — as did the Gennes- 
aret sick folk. Cry loudly after him, if the air is 
full of noisy opposition, as did the blind Barti- 
mseus. Break up the roof to reach him, if you 
cannot get into his presence otherwise, as did the 
sick of the palsy. Post towards him with pant- 
ing steeds if he is afar, as did the nobleman 
whose son was dying. Do his bidding should he 
say, '^ Go show yourself to the priest," ''Go wash 
in the pool of Siloam," as did the lepers and the 
blind man. Do all this by coming with a peni- 
tent heart to Jesus, in prayer for pardon, renewal, 
and eternal life; for this is touching him, is cry- 
ing and posting after him, is breaking up the 



THE SUPREME REMEDY. 219 

roof to reach him; perseveringly and strenuously 
doing this is perseveringly and strenuously doing 
all these. Such are the rigid, inflexible condi- 
tions on which Christ oflTers to heal and save 
souls. The persons who fulfil these conditions 
are the only persons who ever get healed and 
saved. A host have been saved, a host will be, 
but not one solitary individual of the number 
will ever be able to say that the blessing came to 
him otherwise than as cure came to the sick 
bodies which pressed from all quarters beseech- 
ingly into the presence of Jesus. 

What are the revealed facts of the case? 
Two have been mentioned; there is yet another. 
This is that it often happens that sinners have to 
put themselves largely out of their w^ay and un- 
dertake great sacrifices, in order to secure Christ's 
interposition in their behalf. The gate is strait 
to all; it is straitest to many. How strait it was 
made for the rich young man whose case was 
so peculiar that he had to be told to go and sell 
all that he had and give to the poor, if he would 
have treasure in heaven ! How strait it was 
made for Paul; how much of present honor and 
worldly prospects he had to give up in order to 
become a Christian ! All the disciples in that 
hating and persecuting age — under what severe 
conditions was their discipleship offered to them 



2,20 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

and accepted ! They had to take up the cross 
and confess Christ before men and hold fast to 
that confession in face of shame and want and 
perpetual harassment and almost certain martyr- 
dom. But had there been in those days no Pilate 
and no Herod and no Nero of a Caesar; had there 
been no intolerant and intolerable scribes and 
Pharisees, to frown on Christians and hurry them 
away to dungeons and crosses — still w^e find in 
the very nature of Christ's teachings abundant 
reason to believe that many a man of settled 
habits and strong passions must have laid him- 
self out in great and sore struggles ere becoming 
a Christian. The process brings tears and groans 
from strong men now; fevered days and restless 
nights come and go and ache away till men are 
bowed and pallid as with sickness; such wretched 
anguish and wrenching of soul are the much 
tribulation through which some still enter into 
the kingdom of God. So men now break up the 
tiles that may place a palsied man before Christ. 
So the blind and the lame of the present day 
grope and totter through many a hard and weary 
league, and at the expense of many a sore stumble 
and concussion, into the presence of Him who 
cures and saves them. 

And the Book will have it that there is noth- 
ing to complain of in all this. The conditions on 



f 



THE SUPREME REMEDY. 2Zl 

which sinful souls can find cure and salvation in 
Christ are perfectly equitable. They are as few 
and easy as the case admits of. Perhaps this is 
not directly asserted; and certain it is that the 
Scriptures never formally argue the matter with 
us: but it is said that God is never unreasonable 
in the attitudes he takes towards his creatures; 
that he is infinitely good and loving and merci- 
ful; that he does in this his vineyard of mankind 
all that he consistently can. So it is one of the re- 
vealed facts that, in this matter of curing and 
saving souls, Christ does the best for us that cir- 
cumstances will allow. If he compels the sick to 
be brought to him on their beds, it is because 
that painstaking is necessary for him and for 
them. If he requires Syrophoenicians to take a 
long journey, and then argue and beg for help, 
it is because nothing else will answer for him or 
for them. Blind Bartimseuses sitting in beggary 
by the roadside, palsied men with impenetrable 
crowds between them and Jesus — if they had to 
cry out for mercy till their lungs are sore, and to 
be seen descending through broken roofs, it is 
because the necessity for it is one which no de- 
gree of mingled tenderness and power can remove 
wisely. Such, everywhere, is the implied Scrip- 
ture doctrine. And Scripture-taught men ever 
will have it that sinners instead of complaining 



7,2,Z THE SUPREME THINGS. 

that they have to do much in order to bring 
themselves vi^ithin the scope of Christ's healing 
and saving miracle, ought to be glad and thank- 
ful that so great a blessing is obtainable on any 
terms; and that even as the men who, sacrificing 
ease and business, ran about all the land of Gen- 
nesaret to hurry all sorts of diseased and disabled 
persons, on foot or on bed, at great sacrifice of \ 
their comfort, into the presence of Jesus, never ' 
once thought of the hardness of their lot, but 
rather congratulated themselves that such a noble 
opportunity was so cheaply oflfered them, and sped 
all the more swiftly and wrought all the more 
diligently for the thought — so sinners and the 
friends of sinners ought to do now — doing with 
their might what their hands find to do in order 
to bring souls close to Christ, and rejoicing that 
healing and salvation at his hands may be ex- 
pected to follow their prayerful efforts. 






XII. 



Tte Supreme Decision. 



ACCEPTANCE OF CHRIST. 



' * 1 



THE SUPREME DECISION. 225 



XIL—THE SUPREME DECISION. 

What religion consisted in under the old dis- 
pensation is easily discovered. It consisted in 
''doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly 
with God;" in ''serving the Lord;'' in "obey- 
ing the voice of the Lord;" in "remembering 
.His commandments to do them;" in "keeping 
His statutes and judgments." An ancient He- 
brew who conscientiously set himself to do and 
to be whatever God wished was counted a good 
man ; and God, in passages of the Old Testament 
too numerous to be mentioned, promised to stand 
his friend under all circumstances. 

As little doubt is there as to how religion began 
in the Old Testament times. "Let the wicked 
forsake his way and the unrighteous man his 
thoughts ; and let him return unto the Lord, w^ho 
will have mercy upon him." "When I say to 
the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, if he turn from 
his sin and do that which is lawful and right ; if 
the wicked restore the pledge, give again that 
which he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, 
he shall surely live." "He that covereth his 
sins shall not prosper ; but he that confesseth and 
forsaketh them shall have mercy." "Therefore 

The yui)it;me Thiiio-s. I C 



226 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

now mend your ways and your doings, and obey 
the voice of the Lord your God ; and the Lord 
will repent him of the evil that he hath pro- 
nounced against you." Accordingly, when the 
Jews or the Ninevites, or individual sinners among 
them, regretted their sins, confessed them, asked 
pardon for them, and honestly set themselves to 
put them all away, God became reconciled to 
them. They entered on a new character and into 
new relations with God. 

One may not suppose that religion is a differ- 
ent thing now from what it was under the old 
dispensation, or suppose that it begins in a differ- 
ent way. Goodness is not a costume — one thing 
in one age and another thing in another. It has 
a stable nature of its own which it carries into 
all climates and all ages and all persons. That 
which made Abraham a good man, or Job or 
David or Daniel, was the same thing that made 
Peter or Paul or Melanchthon a good man. Of 
course it is so; virtue is one of the unchangeables 
in its constitution. And men come to it in pre- 
cisely the same way now in which they always 
have done. The strait gate of the New Testa- 
ment is just the strait gate of the Old Testament, 
without one single jot of alteration. Timbers, 
hinge, latch — it is one and the same thing. The 
ancient confessed his sins, was sorry for them, 



THE SUPREME DECISION. 227 

asked pardon for them, set himself honestly and 
universally to reformation, and so became a for- 
given and righteons man ; the modern does the 
same things with the same result. The ancient 
asked pardon through such sacrifice as was known 
to him, the modern asks it through such sacrifice 
as is known to him ; the one received pardon 
through the Christ that would come, the other 
receives it through the Christ that has come ; the 
one regretted and forsook such sins as an old dis- 
pensation showed, the other regrets and forsakes 
such sins as are shown by the new dispensation 
with its fuller light ; but after all the gate to life 
for both is one thing, viz., an influential faith in 
God — one securing a full and hearty renunciation 
of every sin, a full decision of mind to serve God 
in all the ways of his appointment, whether rela- 
ting to outward conduct or to states of mind. 

But since Christ came '* the work of God is to 
believe on Him whom God hath sent." That is 
to say, all the divine requirements are now con- 
densed into this — that we have a practical faith in 
Christ, a faith that secures a full decision of mind 
to accept and treat Jesus Christ as being fully 
the divine representative in his teachings, in his 
laws, and in his atonement — a full decision to 
trust and serve Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King. 

This decision by which men now always enter 



2ZS THE SUPREME THINGS. 

the kingdom of God is always the work of the 
Holy Spirit. It is of course hearty and thorough. 
It means war, not against some sins, but against 
all sins. It means this war, not to-morrow, but 
immediately. It means this war, not for a time, 
but for all time — it shall cover the w^hole future 
and say. With God's help I will henceforth never 
allow myself in anything forbidden by conscience 
or Scripture. It is of course an intelligent deci- 
sion — based on a fair understanding of what the 
service of Christ is, of the duties it enjoins and 
the sins it forbids. Such a decision as this carries 
with it repentance and faith and good works, and 
is the one gate to heaven for all classes and gen- 
erations of men to whom the knowledge of Christ 
has come. It was this gate by w^hich the Pente^ 
costal thousands entered the kingdom ;- this by 
which the Philippian jailer became a Christian 
disciple ; this by which Saul became Paul, and 
said, '%ord, what wilt thou have me to do?" this 
by w^hich a great company of priests became obe- 
dient to the faith. It was this that began religion 
in all the old martyrs and confessors, in the ven- 
erated Protestant reformers, in our own God-fear- 
ing ancestral Pilgrims, and in all present 'living 
epistles." And it is just this decision and nothing 
else that will make yonder sinner a Christian and 
regenerate person, should he ever become such. 



THE SUPREME DECISION. 229 

It is to be hoped that he will decide on be- 
coming such in this one historic way. Let him 
resolve on a universal, immediate, and eternal 
keeping of the Commandments, with God's help 
and to the best of his ability. Let him resolve on 
a life of prayer. Let him make up his mind to 
a life-long cleaving to the Scriptures and all other 
means of grace. Let him declare to himself that 
he wull hallow Sabbaths and sanctuaries and 
sacraments. Let him promise himself that he 
will mortify selfishness, anger, envy, pride, re- 
venge, deceit, covetousness, uncharitableness, and 
all other bad dispositions. Let him come under 
contract with himself that he will not allow 
himself in intemperance, profanity, dishonesty, 
idleness, slander, promise-breaking, or any other 
offence against the public or private weal, but 
w^ill, on the contrary, lead a gentle, helpful, for- 
bearing life towards all men. Let him covenant 
wdth himself that he will aim at being conscien- 
tious, public-spirited, placable, generous, a lover 
of good men, a lover and truster of Almighty God 
and of his Son Jesus; that he will stand up boldly 
for Christ and his cause; that he will honor the 
Master as he best mav on the rio^ht hand and left; 
that he will be baptized in his name and ''do this 
in remembrance of Him" — in a word, that he 
will obey conscience and Scripture as a servant of 



230 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

Christ, looking for salvation to him alone. Let 
him do this with his whole heart. In this way he 
will appropriate to himself the great sacrifice of 
Jesus and a new character. 

Does this seem too small and simple a matter 
to be the essence of conversion and of God's plan 
for saving men? ''Say not in thy heart, Who 
shall ascend into heaven — the word is nigh thee." 
As nigh as an intelligent and whole-hearted de- 
cision to serve Christ in all the ways of his 
appointment. And by no means a small thing is 
this. It involves a host of particular decisions. 
It is really making up the mind to enter on a life- 
long and most laborious contest with easily-beset- 
tinof sins and all manner of sin. If one has a sin 
that is to him as his right hand or right eye, he 
must decide to give that up. An honest resolve 
to make the will of Christ the guide of life 
changes the whole drift and policy of that life: 
henceforth it has a new motive, a new direction, 
a new foundation, a new epoch. And then what a 
shining train this illustrious decision draws after 
it ! As soon as the soul decides for God, God de- 
cides for the soul. The Lamb's book of life takes 
a new name. Heaven begins to get ready a new 
mansion. The soul itself receives new affections, 
a new character, a new birth. A decision that 
has such a nature and such a following deserves 



I 



THK SUPREME DECISION. 231 

to be called great. There are few things that 
God would call great, but doubtless this is one of 
the few — that decision which revolutionii^es the 
character and prospects of a man for eternity. 
There are many things that man calls great, but 
if he neglects to put at the head of them all, so 
far as they are earth-born and earth-dwelling, the 
decision that changes a child of sin into a child of 
God, an heir of hell into an heir of heaven, he 
commits one of the wildest mistakes. The world 
is full of decisions; some of them are very impor- 
tant; but among them all there is not one to 
compare in importance with a decision to serve 
the Lord. All the world being judge, it is the 
supreme decision. 

Especially because it is that which converts a 
merely intellectual faith in Christ into a saving 
faith. Throughout, the New Testament condi- 
tions salvation on the possession of faith in 
Christ. But a merely intellectual faith cannot be 
meant. As the apostle James affirms, and as all 
evangelical Christians believe, faith without 
works is dead. No matter what he believes, if 
the liar will not give himself to truth-telling, if 
the drunkard will not give himself to temperance, 
if the thief w^ill not practise honesty, if the Sab- 
bath breaker will not hallow the day of rest, if 
the blasphemer will not revere God^ if the covet- 



232 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

ous man will not quit his covetousness, if the self- 
ish man will not quit his selfishness, there is no 
room in heaven for him. His faith must become 
inflitentiaL It must set him to the task of breaking 
off from all his sins — must bring him to the point 
of deciding on a practical discipleship of Jesus in 
all respects. When the circumstances under which 
Jesus and his apostles spoke are properly consid- 
ered, it will be seen that this practical sort of faith 
is what they must have meant when they prom- 
ised salvation to faith; also what the people to 
whom they spoke must have understood them to 
mean. 

The Messiah w^hom the Jews expected was an 
anointed king. The whole people held that to him 
was to be given the throne of his father David, 
that he w^as to reign over the house of Jacob for 
ever, and that of his kingdom was to be no end. 
Hence when Jesus came and called the nation to 
believe that he was the Messiah, they knew that 
in that very act he w^as laying claim to all the 
rights and dignities properly and confessedly be- 
longing to that character. They knew that he 
wished to be believed in as Christ in order that 
he might be obeyed as such. And when he 
promised salvation as the reward of belief they 
all understood that he meant a belief that would 
set a man to obeying. Who of them could have 



THE SUPREME DECISION. 233 

fancied that Jesus would have set any value at all 
on their faith except as the means of leading them 
to honor and treat him accordingly ? It did not 
enter their thoughts that he was offering rewards 
for a bare and barren speculation that would not 
influence the conduct. If it did it was in despite 
of many, many such contradictions as this, *' Why 
call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that 
I say?'' 

Until his death, the leading character in 
which Jesus appeared was that of a Teacher come 
from God, He stood before the people as charged 
with a divine message — a message of truths and 
laws indorsed by miracles. So far as he secured 
a practical reception of this message so far was he 
understood to regard himself as having secured 
this object of his mission. And when he stood and 
proclaimed to the people. He that believeth in me 
hath everlasting life^ it is hardly possible that a 
single hearer could have been so preposterous as 
to think that Jesus w^as seeking only the cold 
assent of the understanding, or engaging to lavish 
eternal rewards on w^hat neither warms the heart 
nor reforms the life. 

When Jesus sent his forerunner he sent with 
him this message, ^^ Repejit^ for the kingdom of 
heaven is at ha^idy When he came in person he 
opened his ministry with the same message. And 



234 'I'HE SUPREME THINGS. 

when he sent out his disciples two by two to 
preach, they went and preached that men should 
repent. In short, repentance was the burden of 
the early Christian preaching. The people every- 
where knew it as such. And when faith in Jesus 
was demanded of them, they knew that the de- 
mand was made with special reference to the 
repentance which from the beginning had been 
urgently sounding in their ears, as in those of 
their fathers. What would God care for a faith 
that left a man as impenitent as ever ? 

Under the circumstances, then, Jesus must 
have meant, and the people to whom he spoke 
must have understood him to mean, a practical 
faith in himself — one that leads a man to actually 
enter on the whole Christian discipleship. But 
the only possible gate to such a discipleship is a 
decision to enter upon it. It is this decision — 
solid, hearty, comprehensive — which marks the 
transition from a state of nature to a state of 
grace and sets a man fully within the kingdom 
of God. It includes trust and repentance. It is 
the Christian conversion. 

We sometimes speak of conversion as a *' break- 
ing down of the will." This is proper language, 
but still lanofuao^e that needs to be o^uarded. The 
will-power is not broken down in conversion at 
all. There is a great change in its direction, but 



THE SUPREME DECISION. 235 

none at all necessarily in the force of its action. 
Formerly it decided strongly against the service 
of Christ, now it decides strongly for it, and the 
decision should grow stronger and stronger. A 
man who has become a Christian is none the less 
a man of resolution than he was before, has just 
as much mind of his own, is capable of just as 
energetic choices, is just as will-fid 2JS> ever. Only 
he is resolute for holiness instead of sin, has a 
mind of his own to do right instead of to do 
wrong, energetically decides on Christ's service 
instead of Satan's. 

How shall one know that he has made this 
great decision? There are sources of mistake. 
Sad mistakes are sometimes made. Still it seems 
as if one ought to be able to know whether his 
will is fully concluded on the service of Christ or 
not ; and he may know by taking proper pains. 
He can hardly tell by comparing his experience 
with that of others as to circumstantials — say as 
to the amount of previous anxiety and struggle 
he has had, the amount of enjoyment he feels, the 
ease he has in doing certain Christian duties. 
True Christians differ widely among themselves 
as to such particulars. But there is one test that 
is very accessible and very decisive. How does 
a man know that he has decided to go to the city 
without any delay? If in no other way he knows 



236 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

it by the fact that he is actually busy in the pro- 
cess of going. His feet are on the way, his face 
is in the right direction, he is travelling with 
might and main westward. How may the sinner 
know that he has truly and thoroughly made the 
great decision ? Let him ask himself whether he 
has actually begun to be busy in the attempt to 
do all the various duties of the Christian service. 
No man has a right to be sure that he has decided 
on an immediate service of Christ until he finds 
himself actually serving him. When he finds 
that he is really moving towards the city, he may 
conclude that he has decided to go ; when he 
finds that, in point of fact, he is busy in doing all 
Christian duties, he may conclude that he has 
decided to do them. Satan is such a deceiver 
that nothing short of this, combined with prayer 
for divine searching, w^ill answer as a test. Many 
a man thinks he has decided on immediate Chris- 
tianity who has not taken a step beyond what he 
calls his decision. His neio:hbors look to see his 
decision pass into performance, but they look in 
vain. The fact is there is a mistake. The great 
decision is yet unmade. A mere echo and 
shadow of the blessing has been palmed off on 
the man by the adroit adversary instead of the 
blessing itself Had the man truly resolved on 
immediate and universal obedience, the obe- 



THE SUPREME DECISION. 2^;] 

dience would now be in process, at least in at- 
tempt. 

The ancient Romans rewarded illustrious ben- 
efactors and deliverers of the state by declaring in 
full senate that they had ''deserved well of their 
country." I know a man who deserves well of 
himself. It is he who has made the supreme 
decision. Let reason and conscience and all 
things within him rise and say, Well done ! He 
has founded his Rome the second time. By grace 
of God he has done wonders for both his eternity 
and his time. He has solved the problem of life 
and gotten a most fair and promising answer — 
has turned a sharp corner in his life-travel and 
shall henceforth go upward as well as onward. 
He is a saved man. Now he has a right to be 
happy. Now it is no longer infatuation in him 
to be cool in dangers and courageous in death 
and sublimely philosophic as to all the chances of 
the future. He has beautifully crystallized his 
vaporous and fleeting opportunities, enjoyments, 
and interests of all sorts ; and now he may hope 
that beautiful crystals they will remain as long as 
the domed heavens shall stand and echo to the 
praising angels. Wise man ! Let all his friends 
congratulate him, for he has put not only his 
main chance, but all his chances, into an ark so 
stanch that it can defy all the hazards of the seas, 



238 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

and buffet uninjured the waves and blasts of death 
and judgment, and ride out safely every gale that 
man can send or God will send : 

** And when the waves of ire 
Again the earth shall fill, 
That ark shall ride the sea of fire, 
Then rest on Zion's hill." 



XIII 



Tl]e hwm PacifiGation, 



PEACE WITH GOD. 



THE SUPREME PACIFICATION. 24I 



XII I . THE SUPREME PACIFICATION. 

Unpleasant as it may be to admit the fact, 
it cannot be concealed that there is a great con- 
troversy on foot between heaven and earth. 
Shall we call it w^ar? War it is — a war in some 
respects very unlike what goes by that name 
among men; a war much modified by the spirit- 
uality and forbearance of God, but yet a real war 
of feelings and w^ords and deeds. In each of these 
particulars God comes out against men in their 
natural state: in each, men in their natural state 
come out against God. Opposition struggles 
against opposition; threats and condemnations 
cominof down meet aversions and rebellions of 
various kinds going up; on the one hand w^e 
have God endeavoring to disarm and subjugate 
men, and on the other men endeavoring to make 
good their position against God as insubordinates 
and rebels. ''Enemies by wicked works,'' 
*' children of wrath" — so God who knows calls 
all natural men, and this is the same thing as 
saying that they are belligerents, with God over 
against them as their mighty opponent. The 
earth is a war- theatre; not only because men 
from the beginning have been shedding human 

The Supreme ThiiioS. I ^ 



24^ THE SUPREME THINGS. 

blood till almost every plain and hill and sea 
lias blushed with the precious tide, but because 
of a still graver and wider contest that has been 
going on ever since Adam's day between oflfensive 
and campaigning earth and defensive and cam- 
paigning heaven, between the holy belligerent 
Creator and the sinful belligerent creature — fill- 
ing every nook and cranny of the planet with the 
disorders and devastations of a great spiritual 
war. 

But this great war can be brought to an end. 
This prodigious and most ominous controversy can 
be pacified. Sharp and inveterate as is the antag- 
onism between a holy God and sinful man, there 
is no necessity for its being perpetual. On both 
sides the sword may be returned to its scabbard, 
the white flags of truce come and go, and the 
parties which have long confronted each other 
with hostile glances and strokes at last come to 
exchange looks and deeds of friendship, and strike 
a treaty of profound and everlasting peace to- 
gether. The gospel is a word of reconciliation. 
The ministry is a ministry of reconciliation. 
God is in Christ reconciling the world to him- 
self—as great numbers have actually found by 
most blessed experience. We have known men 
who disliked God (perhaps hated and blasphemed 
him), men who murmured at and rejected his 



the: supreme pacification. 243 

government (perhaps labored eagerly to overturn 
it among men), men who threw against him and 
his laws the entire weight of their example and 
influence; and on the other hand, men with 
whom God was. angry every day, whom he was 
denouncing, and whom he was preparing to de- 
stroy utterly — we have known such men lose all 
their bitterness and freely put their hand to a 
treaty of peace with their divine Antagonist and 
henceforth contend as stoutly for him as they had 
done against him. And God offers a similar 
treaty to all his human enemies for their signa- 
ture. A posted proclamation from him runs thus: 
*' Whosoever will," and the same method of 
pacification that brought God and Paul together 
as friends may be universally employed with suc- 
cess. If a man can bring his mind to throw down 
his arms, to submit unconditionally, to yield all 
the points in dispute and take all the blame of 
the contest to himself in honest shame and re- 
gret, to humbly ask pardon for the guilty past 
for the sake of Christ's blood, and set himself to 
be a loyal subject of Christ in all future time, 
then shall the great controversy suddenly cease. 
There is no longer any fuel for the fire. The 
war of wars is dead. Belligerent heaven and 
earth clasp hands. *' Peace on earth and good- 
will to men.'' 



244 ^^^ SUPREME THINGS. 

Such a pacification as this is a great and 
splendid event. It is not mentioned in what is 
commonly called history. Instead of it we read 
of the pacification of Westphalia by which was 
ended a war which for thirty years had devastated 
all central Europe, or the pacification of Utrecht 
by which was ended a war which for seven years 
had poured the violence of all neighboring states 
on Prussian Frederic, or the pacification of Vienna 
by which was ended a war that poured the vio- 
lence of Napoleonic France on all Europe and 
of all Europe on Napoleonic France. Great 
peacemakings were these, no doubt, made be- 
tween great parties, quieting great quarrels, fol- 
lowed by great results, and having a great repu- 
tation. One is glad to see them shining at inter- 
vals on the darkness of national history. Even 
the petty differences and contentions between in- 
dividuals and families — one is or should be glad 
to see them composed; and when the two con- 
tending sections of our own country sheathed 
their swords never to be drawn again, how did 
our hearts sing within us at that pacification ! 
But there is a pacification — one altogether unhis- 
torical, quiet, unblazoned with state pomp, unsa- 
luted with the cheers and cannonadings of gazing 
peoples, perhaps occurring in absolute silence and 
secrecy as regards all human notice: a peace- 



THE SUPREME PACIFICATION. 245 

making of a worthier and sublimer sort than any 
of these; one that in almost all its circumstances 
as well as in its intrinsic nature surpasses the 
most noted and glorious of other pacifications. 
Deity is one of the high contracting parties in 
this surpassing peacemaking. The foundation 
for it is laid in the atoning death of the Son of 
God, in an inspired Scripture, and in the mission 
of the Holy Ghost. The reconciliation is genu- 
ine and thorough — God giving up without reser- 
vation all his hostile feelings and ways, and man 
doing the same. A very unusual thing in recon- 
ciliations between men and men ! 

And there is another very unusual feature 
about this pacification between God and the sin- 
ner: it is immovably permanent. It stands for 
ever, through all storms and calms. Some pacifi- 
cations burst like bubbles almost as soon as made; 
and we would like to see the well-read man who 
would venture to warrant for an indefinite period 
the stability of any contract of settlement, na- 
tional or individual, between man and man. Do 
not be afraid, however, to warrant this treaty be- 
tween God and the penitent sinner. It is not 
going to burst into a hundred fragments, some 
months or years hence, like some unfortunate 
planet that once went sailing, a huge and pic- 
tured sphere, about the sun. It shall survive 



246 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

death. It shall hear the last trump and see the 
embers of terrestrial nature. It is the child of 
eternity and shall live as long as its sire. No 
fickleness, no misunderstandings, no unexpected 
complications, no new causes of offence, shall 
arise to nullify this greatest of treaties. As to 
its final results, they are of the sublimest descrip- 
tion — beinof to the man all the difference between 
being ruined and being saved, between the worst 
character and the best, between the lowest and 
most miserable of eternal conditions and the very 
highest and happiest. Heaven is more moved 
at the signing of this compact between God and a 
single man, however humble, than it is at the 
making of the greatest treaty that ever renowned 
diplomatists negotiated between warring nations. 
Yonder golden world had fluttered with mingled 
hope and apprehension over the preliminaries; 
but when preliminaries to pacification become 
the pacification itself, how joy echoes to joy and 
beacon-flame answers to beacon-flame along the 
heavenly hills ! The conversion of an obscure in- 
dividual is no famous thing on earth, and a few 
neighbors will perhaps speak of it in monosylla- 
bles and a breath; but it is an illustrious thing in 
that world where all is love, and where also all 
is intelligence in regard to the interests at stake. 
What hopes are born of the treaty? Now our 



THE SUPREME PACIEICATION. 247 

sons shall no more fatten the corn-field. Now 
again flocks shall range and grains shall wave 
and ripen securely over hill and vale. Now com- 
merce shall go and come with white wings, and 
lade and unlade at our w^harves uncounted wealth, 
with none to molest and to make afraid. Now 
taxes shall begin to lessen, and the charred relics 
of fences and forests, of mansions and town, change 
back swiftly to their old freshness and beauty. 
Rejoice, therefore, patriots, at the treaty of peace 
which your Metternich or Talleyrand or Franklin 
has been able to secure for you. Your prospects 
are something, your hopes are great — make the 
most of them. But they are not immortal hopes 
and heavenly. Being of the earth, they creep on 
the oTound, and are destined to be buried in it at 
no distant day. But those higher hopes, born of 
the peace between God and man, are holy, celes- 
tial, imperishable : they have the pinions and 
upward-going tendencies of angels, and are shi- 
ning and pure enough to live in the heaven to 
which they tend and where they are natives. 

''Now," says the reconciled sinner, if he trusts 
as he should, ''the war being closed, all things 
shall work for me instead of against me. Now I 
shall no longer be in hourly hazard of my soul, 
but 'shall go and come, nor fear to die till from 
on high Thou call me home.' The promises are 



248 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

mine, God is mine, heaven is mine, all things are 
mine by character, by covenant, by adoption, by 
the Book of Life. Rejoice, O saved soul, as thou 
seest before thee in endless vista all possible im- 
provement, honor, and happiness !" 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be 
called the children of God. Blessed is any per- 
son, from Christ down, who does anything to 
promote the magnificent pacification between God 
and men. Christ has become flesh and died, and 
sent his Spirit to promote it ; and we call him 
the great peacemaker between warring heaven 
and earth, and salute him thrice blessed for ever- 
more. And let all the people say. Amen. 

After Christ and by his appointment the min- 
istry of the gospel are professional peacemakers. 
One moiety of their office is to pray men in 
Christ's stead to be reconciled to God ; the other 
moiety is to keep men reconciled. And whether 
they are successful or not, if they are only faithful 
in aim and effort to close the great and terrible 
war between the sinner and his Maker, and to 
keep it closed, they are blessed wdth the unspeak- 
able honor of the highest and most useful func- 
tion known among men, and shall have great 
reward. 

But it is not intended that the ministry should 
have a monopoly of this work. All Christians 



THE SUPREME PACIFICATION. 249 

are empowered and entreated to labor as they 
may find opportunity (and they are sure to find 
it) at the magnificent business of peacemaking. 
If they consent and succeed in turning some 
enemy of God into a friend — or even honestly 
endeavor to do so — the great enterprise shall en- 
noble them and spread over them palms of bene- 
diction, and say, Blessed are ye^ and they shall be 
blessed. Such a great aim is in itself a blessing. 
And God gives great wages to his honest work- 
men, whether their exertions are successful or not. 
They shall find that peacemaking is as profitable 
as it is honorable. 

If peacemakers are blessed, still more are 
peace-receivers. It is often a bitter thing, we 
confess, to throw down arms in unconditional 
submission, to take all the blame to ourselves on 
all points of our disagreement with God, to ask 
pardon humbly for the sake of iVnother, and to 
entirely revolutionise our principles of action; but 
there is another scale to the balance, and in it 
are so many offsetting particulars of splendid ad- 
vantage that one is borne out in saying that to 
continue the war is, beyond compare, the w^orst 
specimen of policy that a war ever saw. Peace at 
all costs — this should be our outcry. For once 
at least it is better to receive than to give. To 
receive heaven and all that is meant by the term 



250 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

salvation is better than it is to be the means of 
communicating it. To escape total and endless 
destruction is a better thing than to assist in 
making the escape. The helper improves his 
own soul ; the helped saves his. The one em- 
bellishes his heaven, the other substitutes heaven 
for hell. Preeminently blessed is the warring 
sinner who refuses to be such any longer, and 
gladly accepts the olive branch which heaven 
tenders at the hands of Christ, his ministers, and 
other peacemakers. 

How much we wished a few years ago that 
our civil war would end, and these dis-United 
States come into concord and unity once more. 
It would be so great a blessing — so great a bless- 
ing to have a compact signed that would anni- 
hilate mutual animosities, and so conclusively 
adjust the sources of quarrel as to make such hor- 
rors as raids and sieges and battlefields impos- 
sible among us for evermore. But such things in 
their worst shapes were not so bad, had not a tithe 
of the horrors in presence or in prospect, as be- 
long to the mildest form of the war between God 
and the sinner. This is easily king of all wars — 
the most terrible in its aims and the most terrible 
in its issues, unless pacified, of any that ever 
dimmed with red the brightness of a sword. If 
any can become peacemakers between belligerent 






THE SUPREME PACIFICATION. 25I 



heaven and some poor fellow-man who is so un- 
fortunate and so guilty as to be belligerent also, 
let them clutch every opportunity for so splendid 
a work ; remembering how blessed are such peace- 
makers, or even those who honestly try to be 
such. And let those who are as yet unpacified 
enemies of God on their part joyfully clutch 
present opportunities of coming to a permanent 
settlement of difficulties with their Maker and 
arranging an eternal treaty of peace with him ; 
remembering how blessed are such peace-receiv- 
ers, especially in the next life, and how far supe- 
rior to the most fruitful composition that ever 
quieted contending nations must be that which 
quiets the contest between Almighty God, brand- 
ishing the sword of both temporal and eternal 
judgments, and a puny sinner. How unequal that 
contest ! If it continues there can be but one 
issue. The best of us is no warrior at all against 
a divine adversary. The best advice that ever 
was given to such over-matched contestant as the 
doughtiest of us can make is, ^' Agree with thine 
adversary quickly whiles thou art in the way with 
him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee 
to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the 
officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say 
to thee. Thou shalt by no means come out thence 
till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.'' 



252 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

And when will that be ! 

Just now a flag of truce is at the door. A 
treaty of peace, all beautifully engrossed and 
ready for signature, is held out to us. It is the 
best that ever will be offered or that can be of- 
fered. Will you sign it? God's great name is 
on it already — will you add yours with the same 
indelible ink with which God has written his? 
Do not wait for somebody else to sign with you. 
Do not allow the hazardous exhausting war to 
drag through another season or another day. If 
you have quarrels with men, settle them as soon 
as possible ; if you are in conflict with the laws 
of nature, get into harmony with them as soon as 
you can ; but above all things get into settlement 
and harmony with the Almighty Maker of both 
men and nature at the earliest possible moment. 

And that is Now. 



XIV. 



Tfce kpreme hmi 



THE PATH OF THE JUST. 



THK SUPRKMK CAREER. 255 



XIV.— THE SUPREME CAREER. 

Look at that child whom his parents have 
bidden to do something. He does not refuse; he 
does not set out on his errand with tardy step and 
moody face and evident desire to do as little and 
as slowly as possible; but, as soon as his father's 
voice is fairly in his ear, he springs to obey, with 
bright alacrity beaming in every feature and 
straining in every muscle. 

Look at that uprising of a great people. The 
imperilled country sent sudden summons to her 
sons to come to her rescue. How those first vol- 
unteers sprang to arms ! None needed urging; 
none waited for his neighbors; none lingered on 
preparations and outfits; none, as he went, looked 
behind him to counsel with difficulties and objec- 
tions. Their hearts were in their faces and in 
their feet as they swept southward to the field of 
battle. 

So uprose England in the day when the fleet 
of Napoleon gathered at Boulogne for a descent 
on her island realm: so uprose the knighthood of 
Europe under the preaching of Peter the hermit, 
and poured itself in far-famed crusade on Asia 
and the Saracen. How did those panoplied men 



256 the: supreme things. 

move for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre? 
Was it like galley-slaves going to their tasks? 
Could backwardness and a sense of hardship have 
been read in leaden steps and in cold, complain- 
ing eyes ? No ; they sprang enthusiastically to 
the enterprise. They welcomed the summons to 
the tented and stricken field. They did not want 
to stay at home, could not be persuaded to stay at 
home on the lovely banks of the Clyde, the 
Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, the Arno, and the 
Tiber. They were bent on as little delay as 
possible; they sacrificed broad lands and baronies 
and castles to expedite their outfit, trampled ob- 
stacles, objections, excuses, under their feet like 
weeds; their eyes and cheeks were on fire with 
eagerness to set forward. ^' March!" shouted 
their lips. "March!" shouted their souls. It 
was thus that the mailed champions of the cross 
met their supposed duty. 

It is in just such a way of enthusiastic for- 
wardness that God wishes us to undertake our 
religious duties. 

" Why move ye thus with lingering tread, 
A doubtful, mournful band ? 
Why faintly hangs the drooping head ? 
Why fails the feeble hand ?'* 

This may well express the divine feeling in re- 
gard to that halting and grudging obedience 






THE SUPREME CAREER. 257 

which is so often paid, as so much unpleasant 
tribute-money, to the Most High. 

How we have to drag and push men to re- 
pentance and the Saviour ! How backward and 
discontent and scanty we often are in our Chris- 
tian giving ! How reluctantly and faintly we 
often take hold of personal Christian work, even 
at our own doors ! Even the ordinary means of 
grace, on the due use of which our Christian 
character so much depends — how little interest 
is often felt in these ; how readily very trifling 
excuses are caught at for neglecting them; what 
hard work it is to keep most professors of religion 
at doing anything like justice to the closet, the 
Bible, the prayer-meeting, and the sanctuary ! 

It is wonderful what an amount of hard work 
has to be done in an average Christian commu- 
nity to keep it from becoming sadly unchristian. 
Duties are too often wrung out of people as are 
the last drops of moisture out of their clothing. 
Divide the annual receipts of the total of our 
evangelizing societies by the number of adult 
persons in all our Christian congregations, and 
what a pittance of a quotient we have ! and yet 
this pittance is obtained only by appeal on appeal 
and pressure on pressure. What cold and awk- 
ward receptions are the collectors for our public 
charities familiar with as they pass from door to 

The Supreme Thin;?s. 1*7 



258 THK SUPRKMK THINGS. 

door ! One would think they were begging for 
themselves, instead of giving people a precious 
opportunity to do for Christ and his cause. 

And it is not of the giving only that Christ 
has reason to complain. It is common for other 
plain duties to be dealt with in the same way. 
They are largely evaded. They are vaguely 
postponed. When done they are done feebly 
and as of necessity, quite in the spirit of bond- 
men. When the screw is driven to the head, 
when the vice has us between its iron jaws, when 
some hydraulic press flattens us between its two 
platforms, then the duties are gotten out of us. 
Does any one say. This account does not fit me or 
my neighborhood ? We congratulate you. But 
there are persons and neighborhoods whom it 
does fit, and they can be counted by hundreds 
and thousands, not to say millions. 

Now let these people make sure that they 
have not fallen on the most excellent way of liv- 
ing. God wants spontaneity in Christian duties* 
He wants heartiness and force and cheerful alac- 
rity. He wants us to spring to do his bidding* 
As the dutiful and loving child springs to do his 
father's bidding, as the patriot springs to arms at 
the outcry of his falling country, as the crusader 
spurred forth for the recovery of Holy Sepulchre, 
as the holy angels flashed into battle array at the 



THE SUPREME CAREER. 259 

discovery of Satan's rebellion, so God would have 
us go forth to the duties of the Christian life. 
*'Do them heartily," he says. ''Put your soul 
into them in an outburst of cheerful and abound- 
ing energy," he says. '' Make your way to them 
and through them as the war-steed, with the peal 
of trumpets in his ear, sweeps down exultantly to 
battle," he says. He wants the very largest free- 
ness and cheerfulness in such matters. It is 
impossible to approach our duties with too much 
promptitude and momentum to suit him. Not 
like Moses when he beo^ored off from the mission 
into Egypt and said, '' Lord, send by whom thou 
wilt send," would he have us; but rather like 
Moses when, in the strength of his manhood, he 
fearlessly flung himself between Israel and the 
oppressor and became the champion of his breth- 
ren. Not like the disciples of Jesus when with 
timid and uncertain steps they followed him afar 
off, would he have them ; but, rather, like Mat- 
thew and the sons of Zebedee, w^ho, when sitting, 
the one at the receipt of custom and the others 
mending their nets, rose straightway and followed 
him, to the desertion of everything else, at the 
very first word of summons. Like the three 
thousand of Pentecost who forsook their old at- 
titude, as enemies of Jesus, like a torrent ; like 
Paul, who as soon as he had met with Jesus burst 



26o THE supreme: things. 

forth with the inquiry, ''What wilt thou have me 
to do?'' and, conferring not with flesh and blood, 
straightway began to thunder in the synagogues 
in defence of the faith he had just been persecu- 
ting; and from that time poured himself, with 
overflowing promptitude and energy, into every 
channel of Christian effort ; like the jailer at 
Philippi, who at the dead of night sprang in, and 
in the course of one short hour made the whole 
journey from gross and angry heathenism to a 
rejoicing and baptized Christian discipleship; or, 
rather, like the great Master of such hearty ser- 
vants, who freely offered himself for us, whose 
meat and drink it was to do the will of his Father 
in heaven, whose steady divine ardor turned 
glowing features every way to fulfil the words, 
''The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up;" after 
such a pattern would God have us to serve him. 

"Here, Lord, am I; send me:" that is the 
kind of spirit that is wanted. 

"Lord, I pray thee, send by the hand of him 
w^hom thou wilt send:" that is the kind of spirit 
that is not wanted, 

"Lord, where shall I go? What can I do? 
In what ways can I serve thee ? Speak, Lord, 
for thy servant heareth; and I can do all things 
through Christ strengthening me:" oh ! here is a 
man after God's own heart. 



THE SUPREME CAREER. ' 261 

Israel blessed the men who offered themselves 
willingly:" God does no less. '^ Not grudgingly, 
or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver," 
w^hether the gift be money or time or influence 
or obedience — let this be the motto for our every 
day. Let the picture of a man running on a 
narrow way, with radiant face that says, '^ I make 
haste and delay not to keep thy commandments, 
esteeming thy words more than my necessary 
food " — let such a picture as this be the vignette 
to every chapter in our religious history. 

Does not our natural sense of the fitness of 
things tell us that this is the true way of dealing 
with our duties? duties so excellent in their na- 
ture and laid on us by so excellent a friend and 
benefactor as God in Christ. It would not be fit- 
ting to put our hearts and wills strongly into poor 
and valueless things, as multitudes do. I could 
name scores and hundreds of vanities on which 
the zealous energy of men is shockingly mis- 
placed. See how eagerly they chase the bubbles ! 
See with what ready enthusiasm they run after the 
phantoms ! Certainly this spontaneous and head- 
long rush after mere emptiness is preposterous. 
But it is not preposterous — on the contrary, it is 
one of the fittest and most reasonable of things — 
to throw ourselves w^ith all our might into such a 
service as Christ's. It is a first-class service. 



26^ THE suprkm^e: things. 

Never was better; never one half as good. I 
might just as well have said, never one a thou- 
sandth part as good. The service is absolutely- 
perfect. Our Christian duties are so many pure 
and exalted righteousnesses. They are the rubies 
and sapphires and emeralds and other precious 
stones which make the twelve foundations of 
heaven. Why should not men grasp them with 
both hands, and grasp them just as soon as they 
have a chance ? It is well to be zealously aflfected 
always in a good thing; and this thing that we 
call religion and the service of Christ is so good a 
thinof that we mio^ht search the world around 
without finding its peer. 

Every man according to the deeds done in the 
body : this principle of the judgment-day assures 
us that each duty well done in this world is a 
jewel added to our heavenly store. Done after 
the very best manner, with the glow and glory of 
a devout heartiness and ^eal, it is a jewel of the 
purest ray and sparkles like a star. The brighter 
our Christian service now, the brighter our heaven 
will be. Is there not something in this to inspirit 
a man? Under the dazde of such a prospect 
cannot one rationally make up his mind to some 
enthusiasm? Grudgingly and as of necessity — 
shall this be the order of the day to us in the face 
of such brilliant opportunities? With what eager 



I 



THE supre:me career. 263 



arms men are wont to embrace opportunities for 
large gains ! Look in on that babel of screaming, 
tumultuous energy called the Stock Exchange, 
and see how men can interest themselves for the 
chance of a pri^^e whose value may be reckoned 
in dollars and cents. Are those brokers afraid of 
doing things heartily, of putting alacrity and 
rousing vigor into their pelfy transactions ? The 
fact is, they become timid and moderate and hesi- 
tating and feeble only when the opportunity they 
have is that of serving Christ's great cause and 
laying up treasures in heaven. 

The more momentum a car has, the more 
likely it is to overcome a given up-grade. The 
more force one puts into the leap, the better the 
chances that he will clear the chasm. A o^lowinof 
and energetic way of addressing ourselves to our 
duties increases largely the likelihood of their 
being carried through in a thorough manner. 
Many a person has approached a duty with not 
half force enough to carry him through it. The 
man who gives grudgingly wdll be pretty sure 
to give only a fraction of what he ought. If I 
take to the means of grace coldly and feebly, I 
am pretty sure to content myself with half the 
proper quantity of them as well as with half the 
proper quality. Have you at last been persuaded 
to undertake some evangelizing work, and are you 



264 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

setting yourself to the task with a *'Pray, have 
me excused'' written on every feature of your 
discontented face and speaking from every lax 
and languid muscle of your snail-paced body? 
I expect nothing less than that you will stop 
midway in that Christian undertaking. The 
plough to which you have set your hand will 
never reach the other side of the field. Your pa- 
tience will give out. The resistance which a 
good work always encounters will soon triumph 
over your weak onset. You will not talk with 
half as many sinners or distribute half as many 
tracts or secure half as many Sunday-school 
children or offer half as many prayers as you 
ought. And what work you do will be as inferior 
in quality as in quantity. But one who applies 
himself to a duty with a healthy enthusiasm and 
robust w^ill may be expected to carry through the 
duty in all its details. Like his Master, he 
will finish the work given him to do. A very 
considerable part of the Christian enterprises of 
the world are left in an unfinished state. They 
are mere fragments — some larger, some smaller. 
Clearing away the rubbish from this sculptor's 
studio in buried Pompeii, you find a block of 
marble which a few more strokes would convert 
into a finished statue. Yonder is another where 
only the general human figure has been roughly 



ii 



THE SUPREME CAREER. 265 

scored out; and yonder still is a block on which 
only the first rude outline of a man has been 
drafted with a pencil. A bust, a mere face, and 
yonder an arm jutting out of the crude marble — 
such is the incomplete state in which Christians 
too often leave their duties. And it is owing to 
the fact that they have but poorly heeded the in- 
junction, '' Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily." 

Further, it ought to be said that this Scrip- 
tural, hearty, thorough-going, heaven-embellish- 
ing way of meeting our duties is far superior to 
the other in its present bearing on all parties con- 
cerned — far dearer to God, far more honorable to 
religion, far more attractive and useful as an ex- 
ample, as well as far happier to ourselves. I 
have Jonah in mind. He is going to Nineveh by 
compulsion — pressed and beleaguered and hedged 
up to the task so that he cannot get away — his 
face dismal with reluctance, his body twisted 
into distortion wdth looking behind him, and his 
hands torn w^ith grasping at thorns on this side 
and on that to stay his progress. Unhappy 
Jonah ! How much more comfortably to him- 
self would his mission have been discharged had 
he at first addressed himself to it with cordial 
energy ! How much better pleased with him 
would God have been ! How much better the 
influence on all who saw him or heard his story ! 



266 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

As it was, his conduct was a reproach and scan- 
dal to religion. So far as it had faculty of utter- 
ance, it uttered such abominable sentiments as 
these: ''God is a hard master;" "He asks un- 
reasonable things;" "The farther one can get 
from him and his work, the better." No thanks 
to him if the witnessing public was not seriously 
corrupted by his bad example; no thanks to him 
if the name of Jehovah was not blasphemed 
among the Gentiles because of him, so sadly did 
he misrepresent God and his service. 

The case of that strange and hard-favored 
prophet is indeed a very strong one; we do not find 
among Christians many such examples of stub- 
born tardiness and reluctance ; but all these cold, 
scanty, backward obediences that are so often met 
among us are of the same general sort, and are 
open in their measure to the same severe accusa- 
tions. They sacrifice the happiness of the slug- 
gard to a large extent. They give a bad and 
false account of religion. Whereas the man who 
answers at once to all the calls of the Christian 
service with an outbursting spontaneity of obe- 
dience honors the colors he serves under, recom- 
mends them more emphatically than any mere 
words can do, and at the same time best consults 
the happiness of his passing days. His strenu- 
ousness puts him into a genial heat. Ivi^ht is 



THE SUPREME CAREER. 267 

born of the heat, and comfort and health and 
harvests from both. Whispered Well dones from 
all directions come to him as naturally as iron 
filings to a magnet, as white-winged doves to 
their cote, or as flowers to the fresh active bosom 
of spring. God sends to him daily smiles and 
messages of approval which only himself per- 
ceives, as bright angels once glided silently 
through the common crowd of men, and were 
seen only by those to whom they were sent. And 
he is and shall be an EHsha. A prophet as he 
passed along cast his mantle on a ploughman. It 
was a mere hint, but how swiftly and energetic- 
ally did the young ploughman take the hint. On 
the instant he deserted his old vocation. Not 
another furrow did he turn. He even burned the 
bridges and ships behind him as his oxen and 
their belongings flamed up to heaven. In his 
obedience he obeyed with all his might. With 
buoyant alacrity and magnificent force he betook 
himself to his new work, so he became a man 
after God^s own heart. And finally his Master 
put him in the very front rank of prophets, doub- 
led his spiritual portion, and gave him to wear 
as his own that mantle of power and privilege 
whose touch he was so prompt at interpreting. 

An ancient Greek had a son in training for 
the Olympic games. Of course he wished the boy 



268 THE suprume; things. 

to make tlie most of himself. So one year he 
said, '^ Come, Lysippus, let us go to Elis and see 
the best examples of running in all Greece, and 
that means in all the world. ' ' 

A narrow strip of ground stretching a long 
distance ; at one end a simple pillar; in the mid- 
dle another pillar bearing a wreath of wild olive; 
at the other end a barrier with a gate in it, 
through which such persons as choose to run for 
that wreath (first of all honorable decorations) are 
admitted. Here they come, ten, twenty, no mat- 
ter how many — from hardy Sparta, from pleasure- 
loving Corinth, from Thebes of the Epigoni, from 
Athens, beloved of Pallas-Athene ; rid of all su- 
perfluous garments, their faces settled into a look 
of alert determination, limbs already beginning 
to poise and strain in preparation for the start. 
On either hand, up and still up, tier over tier, 
tier over tier, away back into the very heavens, 
sit the packed spectators. All Greece is looking 
on. Nay, here are all the ^gean coasts, and Rome 
herself in the persons of conscript fathers, con- 
sular men, and an emperor — raining on the field 
of honor bright fiery glances that seem to devour 
with their hungry flames the men, the prize, the 
sands, everything in that famous arena where 
waits for somebody this day immortal renown. 
And seated conspicuously among these is one 



THE SUPREME CAREER. 269 

around whom burn the special state and pomp of 
the occasion — the umpire, the hero statesman and 
prince, the great Philonides. 

He rises. What is he about to do ? He leads 
another to the throne, places in his hands the 
oflScial truncheon, lays off chaplet and state robes, 
descends into the arena, stands among the ath- 
letes — simply a man among men. What a sky- 
rending shout ! Hidden in it, no doubt, is the 
young voice of Lysippus, who now feels sure of 
seeing the finest possible examples in his art 
which the world can show. 

Now look for somethinof worth seeinof. Full 
well you may. For these are all picked men, 
winged Mercuries, miracle-runners out of all the 
Hellenic lands ; and to-day their friends are look- 
ing down upon them from yonder seats, are even 
now cheeringly gesturing to them and reminding 
them that the glory of states will rise or sink with 
them. Surely every man of them is about to do 
his best. And the best of such men as Nicias of 
Miletus, and Pausanias of Laconia, and Philon- 
ides, who has all Greece for his country — well, we 
shall see. 

Now stand evenly abreast, all ye aspirants, 
close to this cord now about to fall, foot ad- 
vanced, eye blading on yonder prize, muscles 
throbbing for the start. Ready ? Then Go ! As 



270 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

Springs the arrow from the strong yew bow when 
drawn till tip meets tip, so spring forward those 
young sons of the wind. Ah, what play of thews 
and sinews ! Ah, what airy swiftness ! Ah, what 
ease and force and poetry of motion ! One mio-ht 
almost be pardoned for thinking that motion is 
everything^ even thinking itself. 

Neck and neck? For a moment perhaps ; but 
then through the rising dust Philonides is seen in 
advance. Nicias of Miletus, follows ; next comes 
Pausanias, the Spartan ; and by degrees the just 
now even-breasted line of men is quite dissolved 
into individuals. The compact sentence has be- 
come well spaced out and punctuated, and now 
there are dashes even. -There is plainly a last 
as well as a first. Press on, laggard ; if thou 
canst not win the crown of honor, at least do not 
win that of dishonor. On with you, Pausanias ! 
you may overtake Nicias yet. On with you, Ni- 
cias ! who knows but that you may overtake 
Philonides himself? Impossible things sometimes 
happen. So strain away, all of you, for glory, for 
dear glory ! the goal is yet far away ; something 
may happen to befriend those who are fallen be- 
hind ; even the last has been known to become 
the first ! And the thousands leap on their seats 
and shout with almost frantic gestures their babel 
of encourao['ement or chidinof. 



THK SUPREME CAREER. 27I 

Nevertheless still grows the interval between 
Philonides and his pursuers. Do you see it, O 
men? Can you bear it, O men? And is this 
really the best you can do ? you Nicias of Mile- 
tus; you Pausanias of Sparta; you laggard Sinon 
of — who cares what country? Now for a supreme 
effort ! And the great sea of spectators, right and 
left, tosses and thunders like Adria itself under 
Euroclydon. The runners redouble their efforts. 
The sweat streams from their faces ; the breath 
of some is beginning to come and go in pantings 
and sobbings ; and now the feet of Sinon, laggard 
and last, are even beginning to waver. But 
Philonides — each moment his eye brightens, his 
pace mends, and the uplift of his foot gets more 
free and regal. See how he is gliding away from 
the foremost of them all ! Was ever such run- 
ning? And the wildly cheering people say, 
Never; and the sonorous hills send back the w^ord 
multiplied. Never, Never. 

One more chance. The goal is near, but it is 
not yet reached. Who knows but that— well, if 
the first place is indeed lost, was lost from the 
outset, there is such a thing as the second place ; 
and the second place where Philonides runs is 
honor enough. But they who strain against 
Philonides strain against fate. With a consum- 
mate ease and force that seem to grow every 



273 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

moment, and which have now grown to be sub 
lime, he now gains faster than ever on his pur- 
suers, who long since had left hope behind. At 
last with one mighty bound he stands at the 
goal, and turning with face scarcely flushed and 
breathing scarcely quickened and scarcely a bead 
of sweat on his brow, he sees the foremost of his 
panting and tottering rivals still far away. 

And now all the winds break loose and all 
the waves dash and roar, and that double human 
sea thunders and tosses like old ocean itself — 
tosses the olive crown to Philonides the Great. 

Lysippus has had his example, and so have 
we. Lysippus will never forget that object lesson 
in his art, nor will we who have the Christian 
race to run, and are called to press towards the 
mark for the prize of the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus. Christ is our Philonides. He "has 
left his throne and come down into our stadium, 
in order that we may have the very best possible 
example of glowing and successful running. And 
a glorious example it is. Wherefore let us lay 
aside- every weight and the sin that easily besets 
us, and run with patience the race set before us, 
looking unto Jesus . 



I 



XV. 



Tte kpreme Yalley. 



i8 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 



i 



TH£; supRKMU vai.i,i:y. 275 



XV.— THE SUPREME VALLEY. 

I HAVE heard of a valley which, on some ac- 
counts, is more remarkable than any other ever 
described. It is very deep — almost subterranean. 
It has high mountains on all sides: north and 
south and east and west they rise to prodigious 
elevations. So the valley is ever in the shade. 
Through all the day, w^hether in winter or sum- 
mer, never for a moment does the cheerful sua 
show itself above the mountain ramparts. There 
is not a blade of grass to be seen. No fount or 
brooklet mirrors the sky or murmurs music. The 
voice of birds is nowhere heard. It is all savage 
'rocks, frowning barrens, silent desolations. Over 
these dreary solitudes the brightest day is dark; 
what shall be said, then, of the day that looks 
forth only through black, muffling clouds? what 
shall be said of the night? Alas for the man 
w^ho under such circumstances finds himself pass- 
ing through the valley without a guide and with- 
out a torch ! He shall not see from one step to 
another. He shall not discover the chasm that 
yawns just at his feet nor the cliff that just grazes 
his brow. All paths, all points of the compass, 
shall be lost; and whither to grope with shuffling 



276 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

feet and far-extended hands how shall he know ! 
Unless his lond calls for help shall bring him 
some friendly assistance, he must miserably perish 
in the chill darkness. A valley most gloomy, 
most dread is it, a valley feared by travellers be- 
yond all others; and men call it The Valley of 
THE Shadow of Death. 

David once supposed himself walking through 
this valley. It was a mere supposition. He was 
yet quite remote from it, saw no signs of his 
journey approaching that dark spot for years and 
years. And yet he knew that his travel must 
come to that finally; that, however long his path 
might wind about among bright and beautiful 
landscapes, he would at last find himself in that 
gloomy region where all human paths converge. 
He did not seek to forget the fact. He looked it 
squarely in the face. He imagined himself al- 
ready within the inevitable : not merely at the 
entrance of the desert, and looking forth on the 
dim desolations just before him; not merely just 
within the dreary purlieus where the light of the 
outer day is still strongly reflected; but passing 
through, going down through the very heart of 
the thickest gloom. In anticipation he put him- 
self among the most sombre shadow^s of the 
valley. He gathered about him its roughest 
features and worst dangers. As far as possible he 



transfei 



THE SUPREME VAI^LEY. 2y7 



Tansferred the grim future into the bright pres- 
ent, and lived for a few moments where he knew 
he must be some twenty years hence. He w^as a 
creature of anticipation as well as of recollection; 
he must look forward to what is coming, as well 
as backward to what is receding; and he chose to 
exercise his forethought not merely on some sweet 
vale of Tempe, or some Delectable Mountains, 
whence with a strong glass the spires of the Ce- 
lestial City may be seen, or some Beulah into 
which the beauty and odors of an adjacent heaven 
freely overflow, but also on the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death, which the flesh so much 
dreads, and where the light is as darkness. 

Was this wise in David ? Would it have been 
better for him to have kept such thoughts out of 
his mind, and to have fed his forecasting imagina- 
tion only with scenes of strength and health and 
enjoyment? Do not think of it. There is not a 
living man who can afford to be without a faith- 
ful and vivid anticipation of that part of his 
journey which lies through the Valley of the 
Shadow. I do not say but that such anticipations 
may be carried too far: indeed I know that the 
thoughts may be made to dwell so long and fre- 
quently on death and kindred matters that the 
present will be shaded into perpetual fear, and 
the nerves of a vigorous life be unstrung and 



278 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

broken. Yet it is true that the man is not born 
who can dispense with some voluntary and delib- 
erate anticipation of his dying day. He must 
have it to abate his pride, must have it to correct 
his natural judgments of life and worldly good, 
must have it to give him power to resist tempta- 
tions, must have it that he may properly prepare 
to walk cheerfully and safely through the inevita- 
ble dark. Men are to take no anxious care for 
to-morrow's temporal interests. In this field they 
are to act on the principle that sufficient to the 
day is the evil thereof. But there is another field 
where the evil of the passing day is not sufficient, 
and where men are bound to add to it such fears 
and discomforts as may be involved in a faithful 
taking account of a coming time of pains and 
shadows. 

''If a man live many years, and rejoice in 
them all, yet let him remember the days of dark- 
ness, for they shall be many." Yes; we must 
burden our present with the weight of the Valley 
of the Shadow — at least so far as doing so will 
promote our preparation for that valley. We 
have a preparation to make, and it will be prop- 
erly made only under the stimulus of an affecting 
view of the circumstances under which it will be 
needed. The lamp and the oil must be provided 
for the dark nieht. The '' rod and staff to com- 



THK supreme; vai,i,ey. 279 

fort'' must besought out and taken in hand. 
The Guide who has conducted many a traveller 
safely through the darkest midnight of last sick- 
nesses and disembodying pains into heaven has to 
be bespoken. And so reluctant are these poor 
careless, procrastinating hearts of ours to do this, 
that unless we mentally place ourselves some- 
times on our death-beds, and die in imagination 
before we die in fact, and so goad ourselves to 
action by the mightiest of all fears and hopes, 
nothing will be done. 

Then let us do as David did. Let us, at suit- 
able times, stir up our sluggish hearts to Qod and 
religion and the best use of life, by going into our 
closets and there deliberately walking in advance 
through the Valley of the Shadow. Let us see 
how eternity looks from that standpoint, how 
look the world and its chief objects of pursuit. 
By a momentary flash of almost real experience 
let us grasp the idea of how the soul will crave a 
divine Saviour and a comforting gospel when the 
verge of life is crumbling under its feet. For a 
few grave moments let our fancies gather about 
us the weakness, the pangs, the fears, the separa- 
tions, the retrospects, the anticipations of the 
closing scene ; and so, as if out of the bosom of 
reality, find what a comfort it is for a departing 
soul to have lived a consistent Christian life, and 



28o THE SUPREME THINGS. 

what a sorrow to have passed life in ungodliness 
or vanity. 

Mark the confidence shown by David on the 
occasion of his passing in imagination through 
the Valley of the Shadow. '^ Though I pass 
through it,'' said he, '^ I will fear no evil." The 
same forecasting would have chilled some men to 
the heart: but it gave him no disturbance what- 
ever. He looked without a particle of fear on the 
shaded and awful landscapes amid which for the 
moment he had transported himself. They wore 
no horror of thick darkness to him. They were 
no blanching of the cheek, no smiting together of 
the knees, for him. He found he could feel as 
safe amid the frowning desolations which so af- 
frighted and collapsed many others as in any 
sunny spot whatever. He felt assured that when 
fancy should become fact, and vivid images of the 
closing scene should give place to the closing 
scene itself, and his feet should actually stand in 
that sunken and benighted amphitheatre which 
had for illumination only the glory of lightnings 
and for music only thunder-shocks — as it seems to 
many — that would not be the seeming to him. He 
would stand erect where others had fallen ; his 
feet would fasten firmly where others' had slidden. 
Every enemy and danger and difficulty and dis- 
comfort would be victoriously gotten over at last. 



THE SUPREME VAI.I,EY. 281 

So it seems that it is possible for human na- 
ture — such natures as yours and mine — to look 
fairly at the valley through that telescope which 
we call the imagination, and deliberately contem- 
plate going down through the very heart of it 
without fear. David was a man of fears and 
hopes, as keenly sensitive to evils and blessings 
as most men. He knew w^iat it was to have his 
j heart melt within him like wax. Never was timid 
' woman or child more overcome with apprehen- 
I sion and dissolved in alarm than this same David 
i was on some occasions. And yet, by some means, 
j he had become able to figure himself passing cen- 
' trally through the Valley of the Shadow of Death 
without a changing countenance or fluttering 
I heart. By some means he had so mastered his 
trembling nature that he could look forward to 
the last dark and stormy stage of his journey with 
the confidence of performing it with entire safety. 
His attainment m.ay be ours. Dreary as is 
the land of shadows and pains; repulsive to our 
natural feelings as are all the features of its weird 
and grim desolations; shrink back as many do 
from its verdureless confines with struggling 
amazement and anguish, w^e may make vivid 
pictures of all that is dismal there, and gather all 
about us in intense verisimilitude of circum- 
stance and arrangement in the mimic tragedy of 



28a THE SUPREME THINGS. 

our thoughts, and yet gaze on all with hearts un- 
touched of sorrow, unchilled by a single misgiv- 
ing. Perhaps through fear of death we have all 
our lives been subject to bondage; perhaps our 
hearts have always been so feeble that the grisly 
king could shake his spear nowhere within our 
horizon without filling us with tremors; yet we 
can learn to look on the monster with perfect 
composure, and even anticipate grappling with 
him in final conflict without the slightest quaver- 
ing of heart. Why not ? we who never have had 
fits of trembling severer than David's. 

And such an attainment is greatly worth the 
making. To be able to say intelligently and 
deliberately, with a firm voice, ''Though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil," is certainly a thing greatly to be 
coveted. Many a king has there been who would 
have gladly parted with his crown for the sake of 
being able to say as much. Many a miser has 
there been who would have poured out his treas- 
ures like water, to the last farthing, for the sake 
of saying as much. And wisely. A firm soul in 
view of death, provided it be justified by the facts 
of the case, is beyond all price. Th6re are un- 
sounded depths of comfort and strength and ex- 
ecutive usefulness in it. There are in it a buoy- 
ancy and steadiness and solid power for life's 



THE SUPREME VAI.I.EY. 283 

work, and aptitudes for making the most of life's 
enjoyments, which nothing else can supply. It 
is a sad thing to go trembling all along our jour- 
ney for the sake of the last dark stage of it, dying 
a hundred deaths in the fear of dying one; and 
still more sad to save ourselves this trembling by 
doing so irrational and unmanly a thing as shut- 
ting our eyes on the certain realities of our fu- 
ture. Let us do neither the one nor the other. 
Let us neither refuse to see the truth nor shake 

j before it like an aspen when it is seen. Let us 
look after the secret of David's profound repose, 
when travelling the same journey wuth ourselves 
to the same shadow^ed valley. Perhaps we shall 
thus find a way of infusing a rational courage into 
our own hearths. It may be we shall learn how 
we may open our eyes widely on death without a 
mask or veil, and yet feel no faintness at heart 
nor have that heart beat one throb the quicker. 
We desire this, desire it greatly; and yet not 
more than we ought, provided there is no need 

" of sacrificing our future safety to our present 
comfort. Perhaps David's method of a brave 
and untremulous heart w^ill prove to be one 
which can give both comfort and safety to us, 
and, indeed, comfort by means of safety. Let us 
inquire. 

The whole thing that David said was this: 



284 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

*' Though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art 
with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 
Now we discover something greatly worth atten- 
tion. Here we have not only the courageous 
confidence of David, but also the ground of his 
confidence. What it was that enabled him to 
look forward to death with calmness; what it was 
that made him believe that when, in the provi- 
dence of God, he should come to stand centrally 
in that sunless and verdureless valley, in which 
all terrible things seem to have their home, he 
would find himself as stout of heart and as safe 
as when he had come home, in the flush of youth 
and strength of armies, to an unchallenged throne 
in Jerusalem — what enabled him to do this was 
the consciousness of present divine favor, the 
consciousness of a present religious experience. 

He has nothing to say of philosophy. It was 
not the supposed distance of the evil that lent 
him courage and faith. Nor was it such natural 
hardihood and habit of danger as he had been 
familiar with in his life as a soldier. He will not 
admit that he is strong by any of these. It is 
from higher sources, from nobler and safer foun- 
tains, that he draws the deep quiet and hopeful- 
ness which he feels. His supports are religious. 

And his confidence is not based on some grace 



t 



THE SUPREME VALLEY. 285 



that he will possess. Some sinners look at dis- 
tant death without particular concern, because of 
the repentance which they propose to insert, in 
good time, between themselves and the Valley of 
the Shadow. Some decayed Christians may find 
their tranquillity not sensibly disturbed by thought 
of the closing scene, because of the higher style of 
piety which they mean to insert somewhere be- 
tween this and the yet distant glooms. They are 
sustained by what they hope to possess. David 
was sustained by what he possessed already. 
*'Thou art with me;" not. Thou wilt be with 
me. The present religious experience is the rock 
on which the Psalmist rested. The anticipated 
religion may never come: the religion possessed 
is sure to continue. The new heart that is act- 
ually felt beating warmly under the ribs of to-day 
is victory over death and hell already signed, 
sealed, and delivered; the new heart which it is 
proposed to have to-morrow is at best but heaven 
in perad venture; and there is abundance of time 
to insert between it and now the Valley of the 
Shadow. The consciousness of holy affections and 
a conscientious life already begun was a sure 
pledge to David that the God who dwelt and 
wrought in him now would stand by him to the 
end. Would the Infinite forsake him at his great- 
est need ? After having cheered and helped him 



286 . THE SUPREME THINGS. 

in his strong and prosperous time, would God de- 
sert him just when all earthly props are falling, 
and a divine solace and help from being a privi- 
lege have become a necessity ? 

"No,'' he argues; ''in six troubles God has 
been with me, and he will not forsake me in the 
seventh. When my flesh and heart fail, he will 
be the strength of my heart and my portion for 
ever. When I pass through the waters, he will 
be with me, and through the floods, they shall 
not overflow me. It is, indeed, a gloomy vale 
to look upon that I see before me; I realize the 
lonely and rugged fierceness of that aspect that 
has terrified so many; but I have already secured 
a pledged Guide and Helper as great as the occa- 
sion, torches as many and far-flaming as suit the 
intense blackness ; and why should I fear ? Will 
not Jehovah keep appointment with me at the en- 
trance of the valley? With my hand in his, can 
I stumble so as not to rise again, can I wander so 
as not to be drawn back? Must it not be light 
where he is and where he is torch-bearer? Must 
it not be safe where his almightiness is shield 
and rod and staff*? Must it not be easy to be 
brave and hopeful with the voice of the great 
Father sounding in my ear and the echoes of his 
step at my side?'' 

No other grounds of confidence than these will 



THE supreme: vai^ley. 287 

answer for such as want safety as well as con- 
fidence. There is such a thing as hardening our- 
selves against even an open-eyed anticipation of 
the Valley of the Shadow, and by a variety of 
worldly processes perseveringly practised we can 
come to the profoundest sort of repose, even with 
last hours fully before us ; perhaps a repose that 
will continue as long as life itself. Callousness 
is by no means impossible of acquisition. There 
are many ways to it open to everybody, and used 
by some. But what we want is perfect repose 
founded on a just assurance of perfect safety. We 
want to anticipate calmly the closing scene by 
virtue of seeing that not a single feature of it can 
by any possibility do us an injury, but must, on 
the contrary, inure to our great advantage. To 
be easy for a little while, and then swallowed up 
of double destruction on account of the ease, will 
be no choice of any rational person. But to be 
easy for a lifetime, and then go through the valley 
into heaven like conquering princes by means of 
the very thing which gave us our ease, this would 
to all of us be the ideal thing. 

Now such an ease as this, so firmly mated to 
safety and triumph that no created power can 
annul the union, can come only from one source. 
A present genuine religious experience is the one 
3ource of safe courage in anticipation of death* 



288 THK supreme: things. 

There is not a single other in the wide world. 
With this we have a right to be fearless, since 
with it there is nothing to fear ; without it we 
are bound to be fearful, since without it we have 
everything to fear. Not even a firm purpose of 
future religion, and that at no distant day, will 
answer as a substitute. Multitudes try to make 
it answer ; but if they succeed in gaining the 
tranquillity, they do it without the safety. Nay, 
they enhance their danger a hundred-fold. The 
greater their unconcern, the more likely their 
destruction. These procrastinators must quiet 
themselves in view of the valley by repenting and 
believing. And just as soon as by these acts they 
become qualified to say to God, ''Thou art with 
me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me," just 
so soon, and no sooner, are they qualified to say, 
''Though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil." 

Is it not time for us to have both David's con- 
fidence and his grounds for confidence? Dying 
beings as we are, the fated and fateful valley 
only a few spans off, forced to look at it almost 
daily, as we are, by reason and conscience and 
divine providence, and forced to tremble as w^e 
look, many of us, I ask. Is it not time for us to be 
safely at rest? How much longer shall our knees 
smite together, and have occasion to do it ? How 



THE SUPREME VAI.I.EY. 289 

much longer shall we practically deem it the 
wiser part to shudder at death all our lives long, 
and then be destroyed by it, instead of looking at 
it serenely all our lives long, and at last being 
saved by it ? Down, down into the woful valley 
all humanity is ceaselessly marching ; we are on 
the march among the rest. By day and by night, 
waking and sleeping, working and resting, we are 
ever drawing nearer those blackened and angry 
wastes ; perhaps some of us are already so near 
that our hands can almost touch the solid dark- 
ness of our last sickness and grave. Is it not time 
to have an almighty Helper by our side? Is it 
not time to put oil in our vessels ? high time to 
take the rod and staflf of an honest religion in our 
hands ? Many have waited a little, only a little, 
I and while waiting suddenly found themselves en- 
compassed by the midnight of their last sick- 
ness — solitary, disconsolate, ruined. 

It is a great thing for a poor mortal to be able 
to say to God, Thoti art with me. And yet it is 
an ability at the option of the humblest. Though 
he dwells in the poorest structure that man ever 
called home, he may, if he will, have God to 
dwell there with him. Though he is without 
learning, without talents, without friends, he need 
not be without God. As all, without exception, 
must pass through the dark valley, so it is the 

The Supreme Things. I Q 



290 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

privilege of all to have the only preparation for 
it in the nature of things possible, namely, the 
friendly companionship of the Supreme Being. 
Having this, all danger is abolished, and so all 
fear should be. Having this, we can walk through 
the night as firmly and fairly as through the day. 
Having this, we can pass the floods of Jordan with 
an unwavering and unwetted foot, even as on dry 
land. 

It so happens, also, that this specific against 
the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow — this safe, 
accessible, sure, and only specific — is valuable for 
a thousand purposes and times besides those hav- 
ing to do with death. The friendly companion- 
ship of God is a blessing always and everywhere. 
What moment is there when it cannot be of ser- 
vice to us? What place is there where we cannot 
be the w^Iser and happier and stronger for all 
worthy efforts from having such a fellowship ? A 
helping God at our right hand is surely the joy 
and power of all life as well as the solace of all 
death, anticipated and actual. So that when we 
gain David's repose by David's means, we are 
very far from gaining a great relief on the usual 
condition of great sacrifices. We do not displace 
one evil by inserting another ; but instead of 
darkness we put light, instead of weakness we 
put strength, instead of pain we put joy. We 



THE SUPREME VALLEY. 29 1 

cure our disease not by a remedy that vitiates the 
general system, and whose noxious forces cannot 
be eliminated for years after they have done their 
work, if ever, but by a remedy all of whose rela- 
tions and eiSfects are happy and precious in the 
highest degree. Were there no Valley of the 
Shadow to be disarmed of its terrors, still there 
could be nothing so good for us as an ability to 
say, Tlioit^ O God^ art with me. There are mines 
of comfort in it. There are knowledge and use- 
fulness and virtue in it. In it is the kinordom of 
heaven. Shall not we light up the dark valley, 
w^hich is not far away, with the blaze of such a 
diamond as this? — a gem which, when it has 
served its temporary purpose, will make us won- 
drous rich, and shine as a star on our brow ten 
thousand ages after the earth has been left be- 
hind. 



XVI. 



Tte kpreme Future, 



THE FUTURE AFTER DEATH. 



1 



THE SUPREME FUTURE. 295 



XVI.— THE SUPREME FUTURE. 

To the child the man who has lived well-nigh 
a century seems to have lived a long time. But 
what is a century to the lifetime of a Methuselah? 
what the lifetime of a Methuselah to some of the 
great geological and astronomical periods which 
slowly unroll themselves beneath our feet and 
over our heads? And what are even these last, 
with their confounding millions and hundreds of 
millions of years, to that great Hereafter, that 
shoreless Future, that absolute For ever, that 
surely belongs to every human being? 

Philosophy has pointed, but Revelation has 
spoken. Philosophy has pointed to our inevitable 
For ever with many fingers, but Revelation has 
spoken of it with many tongues. With clear and 
authoritative voice— a voice that never quavers 
into a peradventure and has seldom been misun- 
derstood—the Scriptures assure us that a true and 
absolute immortality awaits all humanity from 
the highest to the lowest, from the best to the 
worst; "and this clear voice is echoed in the belief 
and traditions of all nations. This is enough. In 
his reasonings and in his living the reasonable- 



256 THE SUPREMP: things. 

man will assume that life and immortality have 
been brought to light. 

O man, whosoever thou art, thou hast the o-ift 
of eternal years ! Think of it: the gift of eternal 
years ! 

Think of it when oppressed with a sense of the 
brevity of the present life. There are times when 
our life in this world seems but a handbreadth, 
and our age as nothing before us. We are bur- 
dened with the extreme narrowness of our day 
and with a sense of how little the most favored 
and the most diligent can accomplish or enjoy be- 
fore the sun sets. The hours shoot by us like 
arrows; only they do not whistle as they go. 
Childhood is exchanged for youth, youth for ma- 
turity, and maturity for old age, almost before we 
are aware. We scarcely begin to learn before 
our lessons are cut short; scarcely begin to do 
business before our operations are brought to a 
final close; scarcely begin to take a little comfort 
before the pains of the last sickness are upon us; 
scarcely begin to enjoy our honors or estates be- 
fore we have to say adieu to them. A good part 
of the time our sense of this is vague; but every 
now and then the facts start up solemnly before 
us and oppress us with their majesty. We feel 
as if it were hardly worth while to begin to live 
for the sake of such a scanty and insufficient pe- 



I 



THE SUPREME FUTURE. 297 

f riod — such a vapor, such a post, such a weaver's 
shuttle, such a swift ship, such a flying eagle. 

At such times let us think of the eternal 
years, of the no end of years surely coming to 
every one of us. What we call death is not the 
end of our living. We have time enough yet: as 
much as the most thirsty craver for life could pos- 
sibly ask, as much as there is in a shoreless 
always. You are not to be extinguished so 
speedily, my friend. You are not such a shooting 
star, such a will-o'-the-wisp, as you think. Plans 
and performances, wishings and willings and 
strivings of yours shall go on without break 
w^orld without end. You shall count out one 
after another, not seventy, but eternal years. 
- Think of this when you have gotten a startling 
view of the nothingness of our traditional three- 
score-and-ten; think of the eternal years through 
which you are destined to prolong your conscious 
and active life. 

Are you sometimes beset with sorrows? Of 
course you are, or will be. Think then of the 
eternal years : of the great for ever, on the 
threshold of which you are standing, and for 
which your trials may fit you, and in which, if 
you choose, you shall never see a trial. You 
will find that earthly ills look extremely small 
in the presence of the stupendous everlasting: 



298 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

mere momentary things, of no account to speak 
of in the history of one whose experience stretches 
through an infinite series of years. 

It would not be very strange if the time should 
come to you, as it has come to many, when the 
day is very dark with clouds of many names, 
when the sum of your vexations and disappoint- 
ments and various ills seems supreme and almost 
intolerable. Can you be helped to stand up under 
such a mountainous pressure ? The shoulders of 
a compassionate God are broad and will be at 
your service. But think of the eternal years : 
of the years and the ages and the millenniums 
without end that are surely on their way to you. 
What are such ills as you are now bearing, in the 
presence of the joys and sorrows of a for ever? 
By the side of such mountains your mountains 
are mole-hills. If, after death, your endless ex- 
istence is endlessly happy, you will make no ac- 
count of those troubles w4iich now seem to you so 
large: if that huge Always proves endlessly mis- 
erable, then these transitory troubles will seem to 
you wholly unworthy of notice. And the shadow 
of these estimates falls on you now as you think 
of yourself as destined to live for ever. One 
whose mind is full of such a fact as that cannot 
lay much stress on the momentary experiences of 
this world, whether pleasurable or painful. Noth- 



THK SUPREME FUTURE. 299 

ing but God is great in the presence of eternity. 
Therefore I say, When burdened with trials think 
of the eternal years, the spray of which is already 
beating in your face. 

Think of them, too, when discouraged in well 
doing. Why faint, man ? you have only to perse- 
vere a little longer, and then will begin to roll in 
upon you the musical and sun-tipped waves of a 
blessed for ever. We confess it: your discour- 
agements and drawbacks are neither few nor 
small. Of old the way of life is a narrow one. It 
is nothing new^ for duties to have crosses wedded 
to them. The walks of usefulness demand labor 
and courage in those who travel them. Those 
w^ho should help you too often oppose; those who 
might reasonably be expected to help much, are 
\ found to help little or none at all. Men are so 
untoward, crooked, jealous, apt at misconstruc- 
tion, so thoughtless, unfeeling, ungrateful, it 
seems as if you must give over trying to be of 
service to them. Your own heart and habits, too, 
are so hard and unresponsive to cultivation, you 
make so little progress in correcting w^hat is 
faulty in yourself, it seems as if your labor were 
well-nigh thrown away. Brute circumstances are 
tmpropitious. Stumbling-blocks turn up at every 
turn. You are straitened and striven against by 
the very elements. Earth seems determined that 



300 the: supreme things. 

you shall not succeed, and even heaven declines 
to smile. In a sense, your own heart refuses to 
take its own part. So your resolution languishes. 
Your friends see that you are dispirited. God 
sees that despondency weighs you down and that 
you are ready to sink by the wayside. Tired, 
faint, disheartened— how can you keep up the 
battle any longer, even for so good a cause as that 
of truth and righteousness ! 

Friend ! strengthen yourself by thinking of 
the eternal years: the sunny eternal years that 
both come and go in the sun. Keep on a little 
longer, and a long eternity will come to pay you, 
to crown you. What a pity to lose such a coro- 
nation day for lack of a little perseverance ! Be 
not weary in well-doing, for in due season you 
shall reap, if you faint not: reap the sun-freighted 
years that come and go without end in the land 
where the sun never sets. No matter if you do 
toil much and succeed little here; it is the strug- 
gle to succeed that God looks at: that struggle is 
itself a virtue and a success. Keep it up a little 
longer, and then God will begin to pour in upon 
you the golden years which not even he himself 
has numbered. I see them coming in shining 
file; the first angel, on whose wings stars sparkle, 
almost touches you ; the others follow, in un- 
broken sequence, across the whole sky and disap- 



THE SUPREME FUTURE. 301 

pear in the mighty distance. Disappear, I say; 
not discontinue. Does eternity discontinue ? So 
take heart as you listen to the musical footfall of 
the advancing for ever — shining and singing as 
it comes. There is rest for you. There is success 
for you. There is your magnificent and all-sufl&- 
cient remuneration. 

Yotc who are disposed to overestimate secular in^ 
terests — and such are many, if not most — what 
moderating counsel can be given you? Time 
occupies the foreground of the picture. What 
you shall eat and what you shall drink and 
wherewithal you shall be clothed — these to you 
are the questions of commanding interest. Your 
business, your gains, your social advancement, 
I your comforts, have quite too much of your at- 
tention and your heart. They have the seats of 
honor and the Benjamin's portion. Their voices 
are the loudest in the council-chamber of your 
plans, and they lead your forces when they go 
forth to the field of battle for yourselves or your 
children. Worldly good is king. Your anxieties 
and wrinkled browns are for it. Your running and 
your driving, your watching and j'our working, 
your w^eariness and your sacrifices, are for it. 
God forgive you ! but no doubt Mammon is 
monarch. He lords it over every day, and even 
besceptres your dreams. Well is it if he does not 



2f>2 THE supreme: things. 

say mine to even your Sabbaths and your sanctu- 
aries. 

This will never do. By all that is just and 
reusonable, put a diflferent estimate upon the 
comparatively trifling affairs of this world. And, 
that you may estimate them differently, think of 
the eternal years, of yozir eternal years, of the 
endless years that are moving towards you, and 
have already begun to arrive. You are to live 
for ever; for ever^ I say : do you realise it? Of 
what significance are the momentary comforts 
and reputes and profits of this little planet to such 
a being ! After looking at eternity it seems as if 
you could puff them all away with a breath. 
They seem to have neither substance nor magni- 
tude. You can walk among them and over them, 
almost without seeing them, and quite without 
feeling them. Once they were sky-supporting 
mountains to you; now they are only grains of 
sand; perhaps hardly more than the dust which is 
visible only in a special sunbeam: and it is be- 
cause you have been looking in the great face of 
the eternal years. This is the potent talisman 
that turns the giant into a pigmy. This is the 
needle that pricks into collapse and nothingness 
the showy bubbles and pictured balloons that so 
charm the eyes of worldlings. I defy a man to be 
a votary of fashion and frivolity while he is look- 



THE SUPREME FUTURE. 303 

ing his eternal years in the eye. I defy a man 
to be carnal, avaricious, ambitious in the low 
worldly sense, while standing face to face with 
the majesty of the eternal years — his eternal 
years. 

Would yotc get a more affecting view of the value 
of Christ and his gospel and the means of grace than 
you now possess? Perhaps you are consciously 
stupid towards all these. Jesus takes no hold on 
your imagination or feelings. The Christian 
system of truth and salvation awakens no enthu- 
siasm. For prayer, for Christian fellowship, for 
the hearing of the Word, for Sabbaths and sanctu- 
aries and sacraments, you feel no sacred thirst; all 
is mere indifference and toleration. You know 
this ought not to be. You would fain get into a 
better state. You want that Christian institu- 
tions and Christian truth and Christ himself 
should appear to you as they are — inexpressibly 
grand and precious. And how shall you get your 
views and feelings uplifted to the proper place — if 
not to the level of the actual facts, at least far 
above where they now are ? 

Of course you must call on God, who is 
mighty at revealing and uplifting. But you 
should at the same time think of the eternal 
years : not of the great for ever that belongs 
to God, but of that which belongs \.o you. It is 



304 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

here lies the significance of churches and preach- 
ings and prayers. It is this, where one asks last 
questions, that Christ and the Bible signify: vi^., 
that everlasting future for which provision has to 
be made. Possess your mind with the vastness of 
your whole existence; count away on those innu- 
merable years; bid your thoughts fly along the 
shining file, away and away, never so far and 
never so long; and, when you have sufficiently 
gathered in your ma^ed and awe-struck faculties, 
proceed to say, ' ' These are what Jesus died to 
save; these are what the gospel proposes to hal- 
low and enrich and glorify ; these are what 
Sabbath-schools and sermons and Christian ordi- 
nances of every name are designed and adapted to 
provide for." Doubtless eternity is what they all 
mean and point to. Eternity is the wondrous 
centre around which they all revolve. Dost see 
how the rays of yonder rain-predicting sun stream 
together at the heart of his fiery circle ? That is 
religion and all its ministries pointing at the eter- 
nal years. So let your thoughts point at them 
too. Think of how much those endless years 
mean: how much possible gain, and how much 
possible loss. Then look at Christ and his gospel 
and his institutions and say what they are worth — 
if you can. If you can ever succeed in realizing 
in some worthy degree their preciousness, it must 



THE SUPREME FUTURE. 305 

be, I think, when you are gazing at your wonder- 
ful eternal years. 

And when you are strongly tempted to any sin^ be 
sure to gaze at them too. Satan bestirs himself ; 
he sets his agents at work. And the consequence 
is that, on a certain day, you find a certain sin so 
conspicuously posted, so bravely apparelled, so 
loaded with presents (or what seem to be such) as 
to be almost irresistible. No end of eloquent 
persuasions and generous promises. Now God 
help you, for Scylla is close at your right hand. 
Now God help you, for Charybdis is close at your 
left. Now try to help yourself, or you are lost. 
But how ? How shall you strengthen yourself up 
to resistance and victory ? Pray ? Yes. Turn 
your eyes swiftly towards the opposite point of the 
compass from that where smiles and beckons the 
fascinating temptress ? Yes ; try all means : but 
also do another thing which will help you to do 
the others. Think of the eternal years. 

About that opposite point on which your eyes 
have come to rest gather your eternal years. Es- 
timate till you are bewildered with estimating. 
Compute till computation is confounded. Ascend 
the loftiest outlook that creation holds or human 
thought has climbed, and try to look across the 
sea of years quite to the end of it. Oh, fruitless, 
preposterous task ! What you see on the out- 

The Snp-eme T'.iin-s. 20 



3o6 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

skirts of vision is hardly more than the first wave 
of a shoreless ocean. What you hear are only the 
first notes of an endless anthem ; and they say, 
''Withstand the urgent temptation, you whose 
eternal years shall surely answer for all your sin- 



ning." 



About you is the rising generation. You are 
the risen generation to whom these sons and 
daughters and wards will look for their shaping. 
What sort of shaping are they getting ? Now you 
are giving them principles. Now you are help- 
ing to settle their tastes and practical habits. 
They are seeing your examples and copying them. 
They are hearing your words and allowing them 
weight. They are falling into such influential 
company of men or books as you may permit. 
Under your hands they are growing up well in- 
formed or ill informed in religious matters ; friend- 
ly or unfriendly to good things ; reverers of Scrip- 
ture and Sabbath and sanctuarv, or negflecters of 
them ; fearers of God and believers in Christ, or 
their opposites ; well regulated and enlightened 
Christian men and women, or skeptics, atheists, 
infidels, worldlings. Have you almost forgotten 
what this training of young souls signifies ? 

Then I say to you, t/iznk of the eternal years. 
These young persons are being shaped for eter- 
nity. Their worldly interests are indeed heavily 



THE SUPREME I^UTURE. 307 

depending on the sort of training you are now 
giving them ; but this is only a small part of the 
truth. Your influence pours like Niagara, and in 
broad, deep sheets shoots beyond death and breaks 
on their eternal years. Do you not hear the thun- 
ders from afar? These beginning lives bid fair 
to be for ever what you are making them now. 
So consider what for ever is. Turn over the 
great thought in your mind and spy out its vast- 
ness on all sides. Do it that rare thing — some 
little justice. Then when you find yourself 
fashioning those young immortals you will not 
lack a sense of responsibility. There will settle 
on your work all the gravity and grandeur of the 
immortality which may be made or unmade by it. 
It seems as if you could not be careless in a work 
that you see emptying itself on the eternal years 
in floods of joy or sorrow. 

I have assumed that you are a Christian. Per- 
haps you are not. You are being called to repent- 
ance by the Word of God, by his providence, by 
some human voice, by the Holy Spirit from with- 
in. Then think of reason, of duty, of the loving 
mission and death of Christ, of a world flooded to 
the believer with a new and golden light. Think 
of all such things ; but do not fail to think of the 
eternal years that are surely coming to you, and 
which will be saved or lost according as you have 



3o8 THK SUPREME THINGS. 

or have not repented. To refuse or neglect to 
repent is not an unheard of thing ; but it is an 
unheard of thing to do either through this life 
without fatally smiting the great life beyond. So 
I ask again, have you gotten a fair idea of what 
that great life is? Make sure that you under- 
stand the matter. Do not content yourself with 
a dictionary meaning of eternity. Consider, con- 
sider. Look forth anew on that broadest of seas. 
Stretch your thought again and again along the 
majesty of its imcounted and uncountable leagues. 
Let your fancy shoot up to creation's utmost ze- 
nith, if perchance from that diz^y vantage-ground 
you may see to the farther shore, and convince 
yourself that the last strand of your ocean is not 
within sight of God himself. Then say to your- 
self, I will repent for the sake of the eternal years. 
Considering the eternal years, which ought not 
for one moment to be imperilled, I will repent 
to-day. 



XVII 



Tte kpreme Bountry. 



THE BETTER COUNTRY. 



the: supreme country. 311 



XVIL THE SUPREME COUNTRY. 

Somewhere — somewhere whither spirits can 
quickly go, and to which the purged vision of 
dying men like Stephen can sometimes easily 
penetrate — exists a Better Country, even a heav- 
enly. 

Better than what? I am not comparing it 
with Palestine, where the ancient saints pitched 
their pilgrim tents. I am not comparing it with 
these United States, where we who believe are 
now pitching the tents of our pilgrimage. But I 
am comparing it w^ith this whole comprehensive 
outspread of hills and vales and plains and waters 
which we call the world, across which are drift- 
ing the caravans of our whole pilgrim race. This 
world is dotted with some hundreds of millions of 
tents. It has room for some hundreds of millions 
more. But there would not be room enough in 
this earthly region of ours, wide as it is, for all 
the past and all the present and all the future 
generations of our sojourning mankind. But 
that better country of which I am speaking could 
generously contain them all, wuth innumerable 
multitudes besides: that better country already 
peopled with an innumerable company of angels, 



312 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

and to which every human being to whom the 
gospel message comes has cordial invitation and 
abundant means of going. What is our earth to 
yonder expansive sun ? What is our sun to yon- 
der expansive Milky Way of suns? What is our 
Milky Way to yonder Central Firmament of all, 
the gravity-centre of nature, the metropolis of the 
creation, around whose stable vastness comes and 
goes the universal scheme of worlds ? 

It is a more durable land than this as well as 
broader. I do not say that the time will ever 
come when this earth will be engulfed in annihi- 
lation. For ever, for aught I know" and for aught 
the Bible says, this earthly country of ours may 
go, w^heeled by forces centrifugal and centripetal, 
about an everlasting sun. But a great change is 
coming. Made up of combustibles and supporters 
of combustion, its bowels aching and quaking 
with thunderous fires that vent themselves in vol- 
canoes and earthquakes, it is a doomed world. 
Its fiery enemies are like the impatient hounds 
which the huntsman holds in his leash w^hile the 
game is scouring across the plain in full view. 
At the proper moment the Almighty force which 
now holds them in check will say, Go! and then 
the heavens shall pass away wath a great noise, 
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, 
and the earth and the works that are therein 



THE SUPRKME COUNTRY. 313 

shall be burned up. *'Not a wrack behind" of 
the old forms and conditions of things will be 
left. But long before that day comes the world 
will be as perished to each of us. We shall not 
long inhabit it. A few days or years more, and 
we shall have no more a portion in anything done 
under the sun, though we may be having much 
to do with things beyond the sun. This world 
will hold only our graves and our bones. Our- 
selves will be far away. As good as dead to us 
will be this vanished worldly country. Do we 
well to call it ^'a long time" before this will 
happen — we who see how fast the children are 
converted into young men, the young men into 
old men, and the old men into dead men? 

But that invisible, heavenly country will last 
for ever, both as a country and as a habitation. 
Its citizens shall never be cast out of it. It is a 
kingdom that cannot be moved. It is an eternal 
inheritance. Its people go no more out for ever. 
Those of us who are so happy as to once set foot 
on its immovable shores will then and there say a 
final adieu to expatriations and death. 

It is a fairer land than this, as well as a 
broader and more durable. Shall I deny that the 
Creator made everything beautiful in its season? 
Shall I claim that even in the present decayed 
condition of this earthly country there are not in 



314 "I^HE SUPREME THINGS. 

it endless fair and lovely things — very many of 
them gloriously lovely and grand ? It were surely 
useless to contradict the eyes of every man who 
has cast a glance at the blooming spring or the 
painted autumn, at a landscape or a lily. But 
the same glance that tells him of the world's 
beauty tells him of a beauty that is marred and 
spotted and faded and shattered ; of multitudes 
of things uncouth, misshapen, disfigured, painful 
to see; of swamps and deserts and stony moors 
and unsightly works of men and loathsome ani- 
mals and plants; ten thousand patches and 
blotches on the robes and face of nature, such as 
suit a world of sinners. This is the country 
where we are now sojourning. But that broad, 
everlasting country beyond death, which may be 
ours on certain proper conditions, and to which 
the radiant finger of the gospel beckons us, is a 
wonderfully fairer country. Do you know it is 
the place where God lives? and of course he has 
fitted it up after a manner of glorious suitable- 
ness. Do you know it is the place where God re- 
wards such as please him? and he has fitted it up 
to correspond. Never was there such a paradise. 
Never shone such a city as the New Jerusalem. 
Never smiled such landscapes as adjoin the throne 
of God, never such skies as spring their won- 
drous dome over the home of the Eternal. It is 



THE SUPREME COUNTRY. 315 

the garden of the universe. Beauty has emptied 
itself into it. There is nothing lovely that is not 
there. There is nothing unlovely that is there. 
If at last we are so happy as to set foot on the 
shore of that ravishing country; if, when our 
funeral services are progressing here, we are so 
happy as to be looking forth there from some 
heavenly Pisgah on the glorious scenes of the 
heavenly Canaan, we shall be free to say that 
never did our eyes hold such jubilee 

This is the country which every new Sabbath 
urgently bids us seek. This is the country which 
every new death among our friends and neighbors 
prays us, with pale and motionless lips, not to 
miss of gaining: a land so fair and charming as 
never yet met mortal eyes or glowed on canvas 
or pictured the thoughts of dreamers. 

It is a land of loftier occupants and occupa- 
tions than this, as well as a broader, more dura- 
ble, and more lovely land. God is its inhabitant. 
Jesus dwells there. Angels, with their shining 
forms and superhuman faculties, call it home. 
Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles — some now 
well-nigh two thousand years old, and some 
nearer six thousand — walk its sweet vales or 
poise themselves in its mid-heaven. Throngs of 
other men, freed from the clogs of mortality, 
lifted altogether above their former selves, ener- 



3i6 the: suprkme: things. 

gized and sublimed as to all their faculties, the 
humblest of them there greater than the greatest 
of them here, pace in their white robes and 
golden crowns the golden streets or traverse the 
balmy air, every one of them a priest and king 
and conqueror. 

What are they doing ? Are they busied in any 
degree with trifling pursuits, with low cares, with 
casting hither and thither for the eating and 
drinking and dressing and muck-rake getting 
that more or less cumber us all in this earthly 
country? No. There are the headquarters of 
government, beneficence, and salvation. There 
shoot glorious forms on glorious errands. There 
rise the anthems and the incense of a perfect 
worship. There proceed lofty spiritual converse, 
the communion of spotless souls, great works of 
charity, profound gazings into the works and 
ways of Him who is wonderful in counsel and 
excellent in working. Everything is noble and 
lofty. Everything breathes of the sublimest peaks 
of being. Everything speaks of the firmament 
and not of ground. That transcendent society 
treads a plane of place and pursuits higher than 
the stars, almost too high for us to descry from 
our low earthly ways. 

Such is the better country to which the shi- 
ning finger of the gospel points us. If, when we 



the; supreme country. 317 

die, we are so happy as to set foot on its lofty 
shore; if, when our funerals are progressing here, 
our expanded faculties are busy yonder on the 
celestial heights where angels dwell and God is 
throned — we shall feel that never could expiring 
heart crave a higher place or a nobler work. 
Every new grave calls attention to that supreme 
country where there are no graves. Every new 
corpse about which friends and neighbors gather 
tells of the land where there are no corpses, and 
says with its pale and stiffened lips, Whatever 
.else you fail of, fail not to gain the better country. 
It is a happier land than this, as well as an 
ampler, more lasting, more lovely, and grander in 
its occupants and occupations. 

"There happier bowers than Eden's bloom, 
And joys supreme are given." 

Unspotted Eden was doubtless a very happy 
place ; but the world has long since heard of 
another paradise that is happier by far. The 
golden age of which poets have dreamed, the Ar- 
cadian felicity which shone and sang in early 
fable, could they become fact in these later days, 
w^ould still leave us sighing for such a felicity as 
shines and sings in the celestial country. The 
best happiness of this world is but a single ray out 
of heaven's noon shot out to us in advance. The 
most solid enjoyment that ever entered an earthly 



3l8 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

home IS stark sorrow compared with the rapture 
that is perpetual and universal in the ''home 
over there. ' ' Never a tear is dropped in the bet- 
ter country, while here tears rain. Never a sigh 
wounds its music-full atmosphere, while here 
sighs and groans pierce the sky like the arrows 
and lances of an uncounted host in the day of 
battle. There no one says that he is sick or be- 
reaved or abused or disappointed or vexed. Not 
the smallest thistle-down of a pain settles as softly 
as a snowflake on any celestial citi^jen for all eter- 
nity. How widely different is the case of terres- 
trial citizens, every one knows, both from obser- 
vation and experience. Who of us does not daily 
feel in his face more or less of the sleet of a vex- 
ing and disappointing world ? On what fortunate 
district of this earthly country are not at this 
moment falling thorns, needles, arrows, javelins, 
spears ? Not that there is not much good mixed 
with our ill, showers of comforts as well as show- 
ers of sorrows ; but that the bitter as well as the 
sweet enters so largely into every earthly cup that 
it is reasonable to say that man is born to trouble 
as the sparks fly upward. 

How heaven shines in the contrast ! How 
glorious its unmixed and everlasting sweetness ; 
its ceaseless and cloudless sunshine ; its fulness 
of joy ; its rivers of pleasure ; its exceeding and 



THE SUPREME COUNTRY. 319 

eternal weight of delicious glory such as eye has 
not seen nor ear heard neither has entered into 
the heart of man ! A felicity that is absolutely 
and unchangeably perfect — set that down as the 
universal portion in that better country. 

If, when we die, we are so fortunate as to set 
foot on its rapturous and exulting shores ; if, 
when our bodies are being buried here, our souls 
are bathing in the ocean of bliss yonder, we shall 
feel ready to confess that never was there anything 
in our experience in this lower country capable of 
even suggesting to us such transports. 

The white finger of the gospel points us to- 
wards that happier land. Every Sabbath and 
every grave do the same. We are dying, though 
not dead : so let us remember that better country 
that is hermetically sealed to all sorrow, while 
open as the firmament to all joy. Every expiring 
day whispers to us to make ready. Every open 
grave says loudly. Fail not, at whatever cost, to 
gain citizenship in that most delightful of all lands 
which you may see just across the flood. 

It is a holier country than this, as well as a 
happier. A sorrowless land is necessarily a sin- 
less one. A sorrowful land is necessarily a sin- 
ful one. Here w^e terrestrials are universally 
sufferers and sinners. There they, the celestials, 
are universally satisfied and saints in the abso- 



320 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

lutest and completest sense. In this country of 
the world sins are an atmosphere deep. In that 
country of heaven there is not a single sin, nor 
the skirt of one, nor the track of one, nor the fear 
of one. It is full of holiness from centre to cir- 
cumference. Virtue in every beautiful form 
walks hand in hand with happiness in every beau- 
tiful form. There is not a fleck or speck on that 
supreme beauty, not a scar or mar on that love- 
liest of all lovely things. '* Those holy gates 
for ever bar pollution, sin, and shame. " Once, for 
a little, Satan and sin were behind them ; but 
they were promptly chased forth by the headlong 
thunders. And now, as for evermore, no evil 
deed nor thought nor feeling, no malice nor self- 
ishness nor unconscientiousness of any shade or 
measure, harbor openly or secretly within that 
country of the celestials. It is swept clear of 
every such abomination. And instead it is full 
to overflowing with all that outward and inward 
goodness which can rejoice the heart of God, and 
a few sparks of whose glory, gleaming like fire- 
flies here and there in the night, constitute all the 
righteousness of this world. 

What a contrast ! How much the better is 
the heavenly land ! If we are so happy as at 
death to set foot on that holy shore ; if, while our 
obsequies are going forward here, our souls, in 



THE SUPREME COUNTRY. 32 1 

robes white as the falling snow, are fairly im- 
palaced in the spotless land, with spotless Deity 
and spotless angels and spotless men for compan- 
ions, we shall feel that the two countries, though 
parted only by a river, are whole poles and orbs 
asunder in character. 

See whither the white and radiant finger of 
the gospel invitingly points ! See whither every 
Sabbath and even every grave, open or sealed, 
directs us ! We are dying ; we are on the way to 
be dead: so let us be mindful of that better coun- 
try which, just across the river, is as shining and 
lovely in its holiness as it is in its happiness. 
Everything that reminds us of the shortness of 
our time here says to us, in no dead language, but 
in our living. vernacular, While you may, and at 
all 'costs, secure that broad, endless, beauteous, 
happy, and holy country, for the loss of which 
nothing can compensate you. 

When a father is preparing to remove his chil- 
dren to another country as a permanent home, 
they are, naturally, greatly interested to learn 
what sort of a country it is. They indulge in 
conjectures. They ask questions. Of an evening 
they gather about the paternal knee, and with up- 
lifted faces and rapid breath beg to know all about 
the new home to which they are going. Where 
is it? What is it like? Question follows question 

The Supreme Thin;,'B. 2 I 



322 THE SUPREME THINGS. 

in rapid succession. And the affectionate father 
is not unwilling to gratify his children's natural 
curiosity under certain reasonable limitations. 
Some things cannot well be explained to them. 
Others it will be better for them to discover with 
their own eyes. But as to many things, and the 
general character of their coming home, there is 
no occasion for any reserve whatever, and so no 
reserve is maintained. The young questioners 
are glad to hear of a land spacious and beautiful 
and sunny and fruitful, and occupied by the kind- 
est and best of people. 

Now this is just the case of the Heavenly 
Father. He is preparing to remove believers to 
another country. We cannot go to it as yet. No 
natural eminence commands it ; no optic glass of 
mere science, however ably plied, can bring its 
golden shores to view. And yet we wish to know 
about it. Some of us, perhaps, hardly have a 
wish that is stronger. So our Father in heaven 
comes to our help, and shows himself as ready to 
impart information as we are to receive it. There 
are some things w^hich cannot yet be made plain 
to us. Also some questions we might choose to 
ask had better wait for their answer to the great 
moving day, when w^e shall take possession of the 
inheritance and turn our faith to sight. But there 
is much concerning that inheritance which can 



THE SUPREME COUNTRY. 323 

with advantage be communicated to us now: and 
so w^e are told in many a pictured word of the 
better country, of a country so spacious that 
should the whole world, from sunrise round to 
sunrise again, and from Eden to the last trump, 
add themselves to its already mighty population, 
it could still be said. There yet is room ; of a 
country so durable that it will not only outlast 
every earthly country and see time itself expire, 
but will defy in undecaying bloom the depreda- 
tions of eternal years ; of a country so lofty in its 
occupants and occupations that its commoners are 
kino^lier than kinoes, and their commonest wavs 
courtlier than courts, more victorious than vic- 
tories, more triumphant than triumphs ; of a 
country so fair that it is the despair of painters, 
inspired as well as uninspired, whether painting 
with colors or with words or in dreams ; of a 
country so holy that God desires no purer site for 
his throne, no whiter streets along which to sweep 
the white robes of his glory, no characters whose 
flawless crystal shall better reflect his own. 

Such is the country that awaits the Christian. 
How desirable his lot ! He will not be Siberian- 
ized on some outpost world of the divine empire 
where the far-coming rays of the King shine fee- 
bly, he will not be set down on some Neptune 
coldly swinging through the darkness on the con- 



324 SUPREME THINGS. 

fines of nature, but he will have his place in that 
central metropolitan world which is the source of 
motion, authority, and government, and where is 
set the throne of the eternal King. While plod- 
ding daily among common things — plying his 
trade, tilling his land, drawing his net — just be- 
neath the horizon princely halls are being built 
for him in the better country. The mountain- 
tops are already brightening with the light of the 
rising structure, and soon its rising glory will 
reach even the lowest valleys. Men will call it 
death, but a shining one will come down to the 
hither bank of the river that bears so unpleasant 
a name, and will hover encouragingly about him 
all the way over ; and as soon as his foot touches 
the further shore, up the two will spring in com- 
pany like- twin pillars of fire into the flashing 
home with its wide-open welcoming gates. If 
any of us have friends who, after living a true 
Christian life, have passed over to the better 
country, far away from clouds and storms and 
sins, instead of pursuing them with tearful eyes 
and reclaiming words, let us rejoice with them in 
their exceeding joy over the grand climax they 
have accomplished and the ripening of their 
dawn into the day that never sets. 

The next best thinor to havinof the sublime lot 
of the Christian is to know that we have it — espe- 



the: supreme: country. 325 

cially in the dying hour. It sometimes happens 
that true Christians have no satisfying persuasion 
that they are such, and even go all their lives 
sorely trembling lest it should prove at last that 
the root of the matter is not in them. This is a 
great calamity. There is only one greater, and 
that is having no Christian character at all. To 
be- without that great fuel to our love, attractive- 
ness to our example, spring to our labor, ease to 
our care, freedom to our bondage, light to our 
darkness, comfort to ourselves and our survivors, 
that is given by a clearly read title to mansions 
in the skies — what believer does not devoutly say, 
*'IvOrd, let it not be"? Especially do we want 
to have our calling and election made sure to us 
when the shades of death are sensibly gathering 
about us. It is our privilege sometimes to see 
the Christian depart in such full expectation of 
being clothed upon with the house that is from 
heaven and for heaven, that half the bitterness of 
his loss is taken away from the household ; and 
as they carry forth their dead to burial, and 
even after, as often as the thought of their loss 
occurs, there comes to them with it the unspeak- 
able comfort of remembering the last cheerful 
words and dying smile that seemed to have the 
better country in full view. Who of us does not 
wish to bequeath such comfort ? Who of us does 



326 SUPRKMK THINGS. 

not wish for his own sake to feel in his last hours 
that it is no mere guess of safety he has to sustain 
him, but true knowledge ; that a place above has 
long been preparing for him, and he for it ; that 
now he is just on the eve of being introduced to 
it ; and that the act of breathing forth his last 
breath a few days hence will be the act of landing 
on the shining shore ? 

Let me consider. What is the outlook for me 
and mine? Can we deny the poorness of this 
world as over against the richness of the hea- 
venly next? Surely that is immeasurably the 
better country. I do not ask why we bestow so 
much thought and pains on this, but I ask why 
we bestow so little on that. I do not ask why we 
forecast and struggle so faithfully and mightily 
at situating ourselves well on this side of the 
grave, but I ask why little or nothing is done to 
situate ourselves well on the other side. We 
have a great object to live for if we will, and it 
is not this life, with its scant, poor, transitory 
gratifications, loudly as the great deceiver vaunts 
them ; it is the better country which the ancient 
saints desired, w^ith its broad, fair, delightful, 
holy, and immortal shores. It will not take care 
of itself. It will not come to us spontaneously 
and in due course of the adamantine laws of na- 
ture. It will not do for us to sit still in our sins 



THE SUPREME COUNTRY. 327 

and worldly absorptions, and trust that when our 
turn comes to die we shall joyfully wake up to 
see about us the bloom and glories of the land 
of lands. We must set our heart upon it. We 
must set our feet in the way to it. We must seek 
it along the narrow path of Christian faith and 
virtue. Death cannot be prevailed on to cross us 
to the shining shores unless he sees that we come 
up to the river by the road of a true-hearted 
Christian discipleship. Presenting ourselves by 
that road, with the atonement of Jesus in our 
hand, death dare not refuse us a transit to the 
green fields beyond. Are we approaching by this 
w^ay and with this warrant? If so, let us not be 
disturbed at the thought of meeting Death. He 
will look kindly upon us. With his strong sure 
oar he will soon set us safely on the bright and 
smiling other side — in the company of Jesus and 
the blessed angels and redeemed fathers and 
mothers, who shall have come down to see us dis- 
embark and to welcome us to their glory of all 
lands — the epical country, the heavenly Beyond. 



XVIII. 

m 



riie kpreme Coronation. 



SAINTS MADE KINGS. 



THK SUPREME CORONATION. 331 



XVIII. THE SUPREME CORONATION. 

A FEW years ago the heir of a great Scottish 
house lay dying. To many it seemed most sad 
that he should thus be cut down at the very out- 
set of his career of enjoyment and grandeur 

) among the noblest of the land. Not so thought 
himself. Never had he felt his situation so en- 

I viable. Ere many hours should elapse he hoped 
to be in possession of a station far more exalted 

I than that he was leaving. Calling his brother to 

' his bedside he said, ''And now, Douglas, in a 
little while you will be a duke, but I shall be a 

! king." 

Possibly in the village near which rises the 

! almost regal palace of the Hamiltons, some poor 
peasant was at this moment solacing his approach- 
ing end with just the same anticipations. The 
young noble lay pillowed in softness and splen- 
dor; the young pauper was stretched on a bed of 
straw. The one was informed and cultured by the 
schools ; the other scarcely knew that the world 
was not a plain and the star a lamp. The one 
had in his veins the blood of many princely gene- 
rations ; the other sprang from men who had 
dwelt ever at St. Giles and swung often at Ty- 



333 SUPREME THINGS. 

burn. The one to outward grace and beauty 
added a most pleasing natural character; the 
other was uncomely in person, clownish in man- 
ner, and constitutionally perverse in disposition. 
And yet from that thatched hovel the eye of 
hope looked up to as bright a crown as seemed to 
shimmer above the massive pile where the heir of 
a dukedom lay dying. 

Both of these persons were justified in the ex- 
pectations they cherished. They were both Chris- 
tians. With this one point of resemblance, it 
was not in the power of their many points of di- 
versity to make a difference in their final for- 
tunes. As soon as the curtain fell they both 
ascended thrones. The body of one w^as borne in 
long-drawn pomp to the family mausoleum; the 
body of the other shut in its deal cofEn was 
carried by parish charity to the potter's field; but 
while this was passing below, they were both 
shininof above with the crowns of rio^hteousness 
which the Lord has promised to all who love his 
appearing. 

In the next world each Christian, whatever his 
condition here, will be a king. He will have a 
royal nature, a royal wealth, a royal glory, and a 
royal power. And since he will thus possess the 
main features of the kingly condition, and also 
the nature most appropriate to that condition, we 



I 



ruH SUPREME CORONATION. 333 



may, as the Bible does, properly apply to liim the 
kingly title, and speak of his coronation, enthrone- 
ment, and reign as we would of those of some 
earthly sovereign. 

It is not every man who can grace an exalted 
station. Of course folly and wickedness in their 
worst degrees are unfit to preside over great in- 
terests. And though no extraordinary defect of 
understanding or principle could be alleged 
against us, we might still be unable to occupy a 
large sphere with honor to ourselves and advan- 
tage to the public. Moderate faculties can shine 
only in moderate places. The fair judgment, the 
average principle, the respectable physical en- 
dowments, which hold with credit some common 
post in life, would do little towards sustaining 
those great parts which fall to the lot of some 
men. Only great natures are in keeping with 
great positions. They best fulfil their duties, 
most easily bear their burdens, most gracefully 
wear their honors. In narrow spheres much 
power is cramped and wasted. It is a giant set 
to do a dwarf's work. It is an eagle caged in a 
room across which a single beat of his wings 
would send him like a whirlwind. Accordingly, 
were you asked to fill a throne according to your 
sense of the most perfect congruity, you would 
select a comprehensive intelligence, magnani- 



334 SUPREME THINGS. 

moiis instincts, a principle broad and solid and 
shining as the interests it would have in charge, f 
and perhaps that bodily majesty to which Samuel 
called the attention of Israel when he set the 
anointed Saul before them. No shallow dory 
would be set to ply on the ocean. No mere as- 
teroid of an orb would be set to enlighten and 
centralize the movements of a great 'system. 

In the next world the Christian will possess a 
w^onderful intrinsic greatness. First of all, and 
more than all else, his virtue will be perfect. 
Next, his hereditary derangement of nature will 
be found entirely corrected ; and its upward 
movement, now so embarrassed and unsteady, 
will proceed with a freedom and power that leave 
nothing to be desired. Whatever was low and 
narrow has passed from him. Whatever is high 
and ample has come to him. In leaving this 
world he has cast off weights, unfolded pinions, 
soared into an easy greatness of soul that would 
put to the blush anything that passes by that 
name in this world— a loftiness of candor, decis- 
ion, courage, generosity, public spirit, gentleness, 
uprightness, with some faint images of which 
writers strive to embellish the pages of romance 
and the mirrors of chivalry. Perhaps his knowl- 
edge is now but trifling, his faculty of knowledge 
exceedingly humble. But death will work great 



THE SUPRKMK CORONATION. 335 

clianges, will do more than turn a worm into a 
butterfly. They tell us of a flower which during 
the night is shrunk to a slender thread, but in the 
day spreads out enormous and pictured petals to 
the sun. Thus, as soon as the light of the celes- 
tial day falls on the mind of the Christian, it 
will at once open into grander proportions than 
belonged to Napoleon or Charlemagne, and will 

, display a richer furniture of knowledge than the 
most apt and diligent scholar is now able to boast. 

I The resurrection will give this noble soul a fit 
body. No such majesty ever sat in the mien of 

^ earthly potentate as shall come out of the sepul- 

I chre of the good man. Grace and beauty tem- 
pered into sublimity shall lighten in every glance, 
eloquently speak in every movement, rejoice and 

I triumph and reign in every feature. His whole 

I nature will be corrected, expanded, transfigured. 
The chapel will become a cathedral. The pool 

\ will become a sea. The man will become as an 
angel. In short, his will be a right royal nature, 
just the nature that befits a heavenly throne. 

To kings usually belong vast possessions. 
They have their palaces and lands, their silver 

,j and gold, their purples and jewels: in a word, al- 
most every form of outward and sensible means of 
gratification in great profusion. Of course the 
grosser forms of these can have no place in hea- 



336 SUPRE;ME THINGS- 

ven. But that such forms as even here would be 
called wealth will belong in immense and ex- 
haustless abundance to the redeemed cannot be 
doubted. We read of the ''riches of the inherit- 
ance of the saints," of their being '' heirs of God 
and joint heirs with Christ;" and what less can 
this mean than that they will at last have an 
overflowing abundance of all good things appro- 
priate to their natures? These natures will, in 
the next world, be substantially what they are 
now. They will be in part material — children of 
the resurrection. That part which is immaterial 
will have, as now, many adaptations for using the 
outward and sensible. But far beyond anything 
now possessed will be the extent and stress of such 
adaptations in both soul and body of the re- 
deemed. Senses now dull wull have marvellous 
keenness ; senses now dormant will awake to 
discover great realms glowing with strange 
beauty, which, though now lying side by side 
with our most familiar facts, perpetually jostled 
by our movements and fanned by our breath, are 
yet as unknown to us as if lying beyond the stars. 
That such natures may be perfectly happy, that 
they may be perfectly supplied with all appropri- 
ate good, they must have riches of outward and 
sensible good. The saint in heaven will therefore 
be rich after the degree of kings, and even rich 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 2>2>7 

beyond all kingly rivalry. I defy imagination to 
exceed the fact Though now hungry and naked 
and homeless, and hardly able to call himself his 
own, the Christian will at last come to a more 
overflowing treasury than that which receives the 
taxes and tributes of millions of prosperous sub- 
jects. 

Wealth is not always coupled with outward 
splendor. In the monarch, however, we expect 
to see great means manifesting themselves in a 
brilliant and imposing state. We expect to see 
him living in a great metropolis. We expect to 
see him living in marble piles, rich with all that 
is fair and noble in architecture and sumptuous 
in furnishing. We expect to see his equipage, 
his apparel, his retinue, bespeak the greatness of 
his station, especially on occasions of special dig- 
nity and importance. But never did the greatest 
of monarchs on his coronation-day appear in such 
a blaze of magnificence as will invest the every- 
day life of the redeemed. Shall w^e be told that 
the language of the Scriptures on this subject is 
highly figurative ? It is granted. But even the 
sacred figures have a meaning; and while reading 
the pictured and often gorgeous words by which, 
as by a flight of golden steps, our thoughts climb 
to some glimpses of the future life of the saints, 
we cannot resist the conviction that we see a 

Supreme Things. 22 



338 SUPREME THINGS. 

royal splendor of outward appearance in the glory 
that is revealed. The New Jerusalem shines 
dazdingly on the eye, with its bulwarks of jewels 
and its pavings of gold. Snowy raiment glistens, 
crowns sparkle, golden harps sound, da^^ling 
companions walk, hosannas thunder, palms of 
victory are waved. As the brightness of the 
firmament the wise shine: the righteous shine 
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. 
One refuses to look at such descriptions through 
the large end of the telescope. We decline to 
discount them into unsubstantial cloud-castles 
and poetical exaggerations. They mean some- 
thing more than the intense spiritual excellence I 
and enjoyment of the redeemed — mean that the 
glory of their character and bliss is expressed and 
matched by the glory of their outward circum- 
stances. 

To these attributes of the redeemed add an- 
other: a royal power. ^' Have thou authority 
over ten cities," says the Master in the parable to 
the faithful servant. ^^And they shall reign for 
ever and ever," says the Apocalypse of the saints 
in heaven: and to reign is, chiefly, to exercise a 
kingly power. Moreover, the vastly enlarged 
faculties of the saint in heaven are enough to 
assure us that he will be able to influence events 
to a vast extent — far more indeed than the might- 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 339 

iest king. The king has honors to bestow. He 
has punishments to inflict. He has armies and 
navies at his beck. Consequently to multitudes 
his slightest wish is law; and other multitudes 
whom awe cannot control are controlled by the 
actual application of physical force. What an 
influence is wielded by the Czar over the doings 
and destinies of some seventy millions of subjects, 

. and indeed over the course of events throughout 
Europe ! But the weakest of the saved is more 
powerful than the emperor of all the Russias. 
Not in the same way nor for the same end; and 
yet that heavenly weakling brings to pass more 
that is difficult and valuable than a whole line of 
Caesars. Is this extravagant? Think a moment. 
In elements of power strictly personal that re- 
deemed man who has blossomed into the heavenly 
condition has, of course, immeasurably the advan- 
tage of any earthly man who, fortunately or un- 
fortunately, has blossomed into a king. Equally 
superior is he in the command of resources with- 
out himself; for in ability to appropriate and use 
the greatest of these resources, namely, divine 
wisdom and power, no living man can for a mo- 
ment sustain comparison with him. Indeed, it 

' may reasonably be claimed that even in this world 
the devout Christian is more powerful than any 
monarch. By his prayers, his example, and his 



340 SUPREME THINGS. 

labors he is more a master of events, makes more 
impression on his times, works more difficult and 
important changes, sways to a greater extent the 
opinions and the conduct of men. He says in 
heaven's ear, ''Thy kingdom come:'' the simple 
utterance that lays hold of the heavenly powers, 
turns and overturns more and farther than cabi- 
nets and armies. He gives from his penury the 
widow's farthing: the hearty bit of copper applies 
to society a mightier lever than ever did rescript 
and ukase. If such is his efficiency in this world, 
how wonderful will it be in the next ! Shall we 
hesitate to apply to it as there displayed all the 
great epithets by which we are wont to celebrate 
the power of kings ? 

It is impossible to exaggerate the desirableness 
of that royal nature, wealth, glory, and power 
which will make a kingdom for each saint in the 
life to come, w^hich will crown us if we are 
Christians. Earthly kingdoms may easily be 
overrated. Probably there is not a person among 
us whose condition would be really improved by 
his falling heir to the best throne in Europe. He 
would be neither wiser, better, happier, nor more 
rseful. Many chances to one that he would suffer 
great damage in all these respects. When we 
turn the pages of history and see what demons of 
care and danger are wont to lurk behind thrones 



THE supreme; coronation. 341 

iand robes of state, and grimly mock the empty 
show, we can scarcely wonder that such royalty 
has sometimes been refused when offered, and 
sometimes abdicated when possessed. We can 
hardly wonder that it has been easy for philoso- 
phy to decry the palace in favor of the cottage, 
and to check the ardor of ambition by many an 
ecclesiastes on the vanity of its chief prii^e. But 
the kingdom of the saint is a very different mat- 
ter. No one may start a doubt as to whether that 
would be eligible for you and me. Paradise re- 
gained is better than Paradise lost. Beyond con- 
troversy and beyond expression, blessed is the 
man who shall at last sit down on one of the 
thrones of heaven. 

To have the whole being snowy clean from all 
sin and all tendency to sin; enamelled with all 
holiness and all tendencies to holiness; set about 
with angelic capacities, graces, wisdoms, like a 
crown with its jewels, each worth a province: 
surely God knows, and every man deep in his 
heart knows, that there is nothing equally desi- 
rable under the whole heaven. As to the other 
elements of the kingdom, it must be allow^ed that 
they have little or no value of their own. They 
are like the sword, bright and keen and Damas- 
cene, hilted with gold and precious stones, which 
is sometimes presented to the favorite of a court. 



34^ SUPREME THINGS. 

He may hang it up in ancestral hall to rust and 
uselessness. He may carelessly grasp its naked 
edge and be wounded. With it, if his heart is 
right, his strength and valor may work great 
deliverances; and with it, if his heart is wrong, 
they may work great oppressions. It is nothing 
or something, a curse or a blessing, according to 
the way it is used and the principle that uses it. 
Thus it is with so-called outward advantages. 
Their careless use may injure even good men. 
With them the bad may ruin themselves and 
scourge society. But in the hands of such beings 
as the saved they can only be means of good: and 
wealth and glory and power held in royal meas- 
ure will be great engines of goodness and felicity, 
worthy of the royal natures that control them. 

Every earthly king will surely be deposed by 
death. Long before death his throne may be 
overturned by some popular outbreak or by the 
craft and strength of some usurper. Nay, with 
one danger and another, he is not absolutely sure 
of his seat for a single day. Not so the saved. 
His seat is perfectly secure. No death, no revolu^ 
tion, no usurpation, will snatch his sceptre away. 
That great and holy nature to which he has come 
will never leave him. Those abounding riches 
will prove an enduring substance. That glory, 
that power — they are parts of a kingdom that can- 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 343 

not be moved ; things which, since they cannot 
be shaken, must remain. Should not as many of 
us as are fond of secure possessions give attention 
to a palace which will not only never be shattered 
into ruins about us, but whose solid and massive 
greatness will not feel so much as a single tremor 
for ever and ever? 

However firm earthly thrones may seem to 
stand, they are never unassailed. War brand- 
ishes sword against them on open field. Diplo- 
macy sets snares for them in the cabinet. Trea- 
son plots and mines at home. Turbulent ideas 
of liberty, equality, and fraternity essay en- 
croachment on the prerogative. Not such the 
throne of the redeemed. No weapon shall be 
lifted agaitisi it by diplomatist or captain or fac- 
tion or nihilist. Not an opposition, not a men- 
ace, not even a harsh glance, will be directed 
against it, save from that great prison far away, 
where all evil lies utterly disarmed and helpless. 
Like some noble ship, with endless riches in her 
hold, safely anchored at last in the sunny, wave- 
less waters of a Golden Horn ; or like the sun re- 
posefully advancing along the breathless blue of 
heaven, far above all petty archery of men who 
love darkness better than light, such will be the 
future kingdom of the believer. Should not as 
many of us as are fond of peaceful possessions give 



344 supreme: things. 

attention to a palace which will never need to be 
turned into a fortress, to a sceptre which will 
never need to become a sword ? 

The future kingdom will be free from care and 
weariness as well as from assault; a thing that 
cannot be said of any well-managed sovereignty 
this side of heaven. To secure that affairs shall 
go on with some tolerable degree of smoothness 
and advantage, there must always be more or less 
of careful vigilance on the part of rulers. And 
often they are weighed down with almost insup- 
portable loads of distractions and toils. Not so 
with the wearers of the purple in heaven. Their 
thrones will not fall, their thrones will not be as- 
sailed; and this, not because such troubles have 
been prevented by anxious tactics and tedious 
labor. No need of these to support a greatness 
which rests on the everlasting rock of God's de- 
cree and almightiness. In heaven there is noth- 
ing to be feared. There none shall say, / am 
weary. Should not as many of us as are fond of 
unvexing possessions give attention to a palace 
whose high feasts and downy pillows no shade of 
care will ever venture to darken ? 

While other kingdoms often remain stationary, 
while not seldom they decline from first-class pow- 
ers to second and third and lower, this heavenly 
kingdom is always becoming more vigorous, pass- 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 345 

ing from glory to glory, according to the celestial 
law. And what greatly adds to the value of this 
progress is that it is never at the expense of sister 
monarchies. Here any addition to one state is gen- 
erally subtracted from another. When one dyn- 
asty prospers greatly you are likely to see neigh- 
boring dynasties watch its progress with jealousy 
and apprehension, and bethink themselves of a 
coalition for preserving the balance of power. But 
in heaven ambition never appeals to selfishness. 
The greatness of no redeemed soul feeds on the dis- 
asters of others. His acquisitions are not depreda- 
tions, his honors are not others' disgraces. But as 
each of the lustres in some sumptuous banqueting 
hall shines, all the more brightly the more bright 
and numerous its fellow lustres become; as each of 
the festival fires, which on some national anniver- 
sary crown the hill-tops, glows all the more freely 
the greater the number and intensity of its associ- 
ate flames; so the more fellow kings the saint in 
glory has, and the more they shine, the more of a 
king he is. Should not as many of us as are fond 
of ever-growing possessions, and yet would not 
care to prosper on the adversity of others, give 
attention to a palace above, whose towers and pin- 
nacles multiply and brighten daily, multiply and 
brighten the faster because all the celestial plains 
around are being spangled with similar structures? 



346 SUPREME THINGS. 

How can we gain so great a prize? Men 
sometimes acquire thrones on earth without any- 
just claim to them. They are usurpers. But it is 
quite impossible to usurp a kingdom in heaven. 
No stratagem, no might, no dynamic of planning 
and doing, can bring that royalty into our posses- 
sion before it really belongs to us. What makes 
a title to it? Doubtless, that which makes a 
title to most other royalties, namely birth. The 
heir of the English crown must be a child of 
Victoria: the heir of a heavenly crown must be 
a child of God. To become a child of God one 
must be reborn of the Holy Ghost ; and the 
moment that new birth is accomplished, that mo- 
ment your claim to the crown is perfect by the 
fundamental law of the realm. But as it is not 
enough for a man to have a perfect claim to an 
earthly throne in order that he may occupy it, 
and he is often obliged to draw the sword and 
conquer for himself his own proper inheritance; 
even so it is not enough to give me possession of 
a throne in heaven that I have come into the line 
of succession. I must support my title by force 
of arms. Satan and many other enemies stand 
posted between me and my crown. I must van- 
quish them, vanquish them in Paul's good fight, 
vanquish them with the complete harness he 
recommends, vanquish them in as many severe 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 347 

campaigns as make an enduring to the end. 
This will win my rights. Overcoming, I shall 
sit down with Jesus on his throne, even as he 
also overcame and is set down with the Father on 

jhis throne. 

It is the manner of some kings to write them- 
selves such '' by the grace of God.'' And though 
the title to the heavenly kingdom must be by 
'birth, and actual possession must be by actual 
conquest, still both title and possession must be 
by divine gift. God must give the man to be 
born again. God must give him to conquer. 
See, then, the whole manner of the accession. 
We must first seek of God's mercy a renewal to 
repentance and faith. Then, drawing freely on 
the same gratuitous help, we must address our- 
selves to conquer sin and Satan into perfect sub- 
jugation. Thus at last we shall mightily ascend 
our thrones while in the act of feebly descending 
into our graves. 

Such is the method of gaining the heavenly 
royalty. Will I seek such a prize by such a 
method ? Plainly the prize is one that cannot be 
overestimated. No colored words, no hues of 
fancy, no resources of pictorial and rhetorical art, 
can do justice to the glory and desirableness of 
the inheritance of the saints. The pinnacles of 
heavenly palaces, the more brightly they can be 



348 SUPREME THINGS. 

made to glitter on our thought, the better do they 
represent the facts. The vacant diadems far away 
in the blue, inviting grasping hands, the nobler 
the pictures which our wealthy imaginations can 
make of them, the more faithfully are they 
shown to us. Give free reins to the artist-prin- 
ciple within you. Be not afraid of overdoing. 
Sweep aside a little space of cloud, and on the 
blue canvas do your best at painting the w^aiting 
diadems such as no mortals wear — only immor- 
tals. The painting w^ill not be a success, but it 
may do something to quicken the diligence of the 
Christian to make his calling and election sure, 
may do something towards winning others to the 
loftiest and most rational ambition that ever 
climbed and soared. 

Who is not willing to have the brilliant throne? 
But this willingness is not enough ; w^e must be 
willing to have the royalty by a certain zvay ; a 
way available only to seekers, a way involving 
no inconsiderable self-sacrifice. The royal new 
birth which gives the title to the kingdom, and 
the conquest which gives actual possession, though 
by grace, are not rained on us as so much manna. 
They must be sought ere they can be obtained. 
And w^e must confess that 'effectual seeking w^ill 
not be altogether easy and pleasant. Indeed we 
are convinced that, first and last, it will be an 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 349 

' exceeding trial to many carnal natures, notwith- 
' standing God's gracious helps, to win their way 
! into the indispensable filial relation to him, and 
afterwards through conflict after conflict into the 
promised kingdom. But the painful seeking is a 
necessary condition of the glorious finding ; if we 
will not have the cross of the way we cannot 
have the crown of the goal. Moreover, we are 
to notice that our choice does not lie between a 
kingdom and an eligible private station, not even 
between a kingdom and nothing, but between a 
kingdom and — why should we hesitate to say 
what God says? — a dungeon. On the one hand 
we have the sore method and its throne ; on the 
other we have neglect of that method with end- 
less chains and penal fires. Which will we take? 
Are we prepared to resign the heights of honor 
for the depths of infamy? to pass by one fell leap 
from the prospect of everything good to the cer- 
tainty of everything evil ? As for me, I will seek 
the kingdom of the saints in the only way that 
conducts to it. 

And I will seek it earnestly. I have seen that 
the prize is w^orth something more than the 
drowsy halting effort sometimes put forth for it. 
Is it such effort that men expend for these poor 
perishing earthly royalties about us ? or even for 
stations far less brilliant and tempting? Look at 



350 SUPREME THINGS. 

them. Tliey ama^e us by their mighty planning 
and doing. They are heroes, they are martyrs. 
I feel that I must copy something of that jealous 
ambition. A radical change of governing pur- 
pose, a life-long wrestling against principalities 
and powers of evil propensities and habits— such 
things I well know, if they are by grace, are not 
by ease and tameness. We can conceive of a 
broad thoroughfare upward to the throne, so 
open, so smooth, so flanked with helping angels 
on either hand, so gently engineered across moun- 
tains and floods, that even a little effort would be 
enough to carry the traveller forward to the prize. 
But this is not the sort of way that is actually 
provided for us. Steep, narrow, rugged — it is 
one into which earnestness alone can bring us, 
and through which earnestness alone can carry 
us. As for me, I will seek the kingdom of the 
saints earnestly. 

Nay, I will do better than this, for I will seek 
it with all my heart. It certainly would not be 
reasonable to seek an earthly throne after this all- 
surrendering manner. The outlay would be out 
of all proportion to the value of the object sought. 
But for such a throne as heaven has to offer, no 
degree of zeal and effort can be deemed excessive. 
I can afford anything but sin to gain such a prize. 
And sin is something which I am not asked to 



THE SUPREME CORONATION. 35I 

aflford. Unlike most human methods of great- 
ness this, which by birth and conquest aims to 
bring us to the greatness of a heavenly throne, 
asks of us no step of even doubtful righteousness. 
Behold a path fit for angels to walk upon ! See, 
there is nothing on it to soil the daintiest sandals! 
Run your eye along the ascending track to 
where far away in the sky it seems to end in a 
star, and you see it rough and precipitous indeed 
in places, but everywhere white as snow ; sound 
it, and you see how solid and massive is the 
Parian marble of every rough step, so that one 
can plant foot boldly and heavily and go on his 
way like a giant. Surely this is a way on which 
we may venture our whole soul and strength. 
And ah ! much I fear that unless we can bring 
our minds to do this all our lesser doing will be 
to little purpose. We have read of commanders 
who went into battle with troops too few by half 
for victory, and too many by half for defeat. They 
lost the victory and they lost their armies. And 
if we contend for the kingdom in glory everlast- 
ing with only half the forces of our heart, we 
have reason to fear that we shall lose both the 
kingdom and our pains. The promise is to 
whole-hearted efforts. ''Ye shall seek me and 
find me, when ye shall search for me with all 
your heart." But if any fancy that something 



35^ SUPREME THINGS. 

less Will sufSce, and bethink themselves that there 
are such things as uncovenanted mercies, still 
they must allow that the surer, the speedier, the 
completer success may be expected to follow the 
heartier exertion. Among the celestial kingdoms 
some are more extensive and dazzling than others. 
To one servant it is said, ^'Have thou authority 
over ten cities ;" to another servant, '' Have thou 
authoritv over five." So I will tread with all 
my might the way to the jewelled throne ; my 
eye shall fasten on that goal as steadily and 
keenly as ever eye of archer on the target when 
he brings the strained string to his ear. So shall 
it be, with God's help. 



XIX 



Tte Supreme Person, 



PART FIRST. 



^Z 



HIS SYMMETRY. 



TH^ supre:m]e: pe;rson. 355 



XIX.— THE SUPREME PERSON, (i.) 

I1.1.-PROPORT10NED and so ill-balanced char- 
acters are often found. Indeed the difficulty is to 
find characters that are not of this stamp. But 
they do sometimes appear — small symmetrical 
characters and large symmetrical ones, but the 
large specimens especially are among the rarest 
historic phenomena. In fact we have only one 
perfect specimen of the sort in all human history; 
one character laid out on the grandest scale, in 
which no useful and admirable element is want- 
ing, and whose every element is rounded out 
into just that proportional development that best 
secures the beauty, power, and usefulness of the 
whole. 

Do you know yonder man ? Yes ; I know 
him well as a man of great courage and enter- 
prise. He is not daunted at difficulties ; dangers 
and damages he can encounter without shrinking; 
he has an immense facility at great undertakings. 
But a person of this sort needs, over against his 
spirit of adventurous enterprise, a correspondingly 
large development of judgment and prudence, else 
his valor is rashness, and involves him in per- 
petual vexation and mischief both to himself and 



35^ SUPREME THINGS. 

others. And this particular man has not the ne- 
cessary make- weight. His judgment is poor. 
And the consequence is that he is a mere Quixote 
instead of an admirable and successful hero ; he 
is perpetually embroiling and being embroiled. 

His neighbor has just the opposite one-sided- 
ness. He has great prudence, but no enterprise. 
He stands trembling on the brink of great and 
useful undertakings which he is well qualified to 
prosecute to success till the time for action has 
passed. He is excellent at devising and mana- 
ging ; he sees desirable ends and the ways and 
means to them with great clearness, but his ex- 
cessive timidity keeps his knowledge and sagacity 
idle. The deficiency on the one side of him robs 
him of the fruit of the well developed accomplish- 
ments on the other side of him. If he were de- 
veloped symmetrically and his great intelligence 
and prudence were offset by as great a courage, 
and so his character put in equilibrium, great 
results would be accomplished. 

Look now at that one specimen of a well 
rounded out and perfectly balanced character to 
which we have alluded — that one specimen fur- 
nished by the whole world and all ages. Jesus, 
the perfect Man, in whom nothing was deficient 
and nothing redundant, had neither this orie- 
sidedness nor that, neither the sagacious prudence 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 357 

Without the courageous enterprise, nor the cour- 
ageous enterprise without the sagacious pru- 
dence. On the one hand this pole was in him 
mightily attracting, on the other hand that pole 
was in him mightily repelling. The result was a 
world in equilibrium. Christ was brave, would 
resolutely attack wickedness in high places, could 
scourge it with cords out of the temple, against it 
freely undertook the bitterest death and the great- 
est redemption that ever were known ; in fact 
never in his life undertook anything small save 
as the means to something great. At the same 
time he was, in the best sense of the words, pru- 
dent, cautious, wary, incurring no unnecessary 
danger, giving no unnecessary offence, carefully 
adapting his methods to times and places and 
persons, foiling, with astute though innocent re- 
plies, crafty and malicious questions, conducting 
himself so prudently towards the jealous civil 
power that Pilate had to say, **I find in him no 
fault;'' so prudently towards the ecclesiastical 
power that nothing but perjury could secure his 
condemnation before that. No abnormal devel- 
opment was his, but the great trait on the one 
side of him was mated and balanced by the great 
trait on the other side of him. 

Do you know yonder man ? Yes ; I know him 
well as a man of large thinking, planning, in- 



358 supreme: things. 

vestigating power, but of very poor executive 
ability. If there is any abstract theorem to be 
demonstrated, any ingenious argument or theory 
to be constructed, any difficult science to be mas- 
tered, any complex scheming to be done, this is 
the man for your purpose. But if you want a 
man who shall do well in affairs as well as in 
theories, a man to execute as well as to plan, a 
man whose thinking and doing shall be alike 
able, this is not the man for you. For, take him 
out of that one intellectual field (in which indeed 
he is a master), and he is hardly more than a 
child. Just as soon as he touches the region of 
the executive and practical, the Samson is shorn 
of his strength, becomes blind, goes about seeking 
some one to lead him by the hand. A little child 
can do it. He is another Goldsmith, who wrote 
like an angel and acted like a fool. He is an- 
other Coleridge, w^ho reigned in the realm of 
ideas and served in the world of facts. In theory 
magnificent, in action ridiculous — as soon as he 
tries to pass from the one field to the other he 
stumbles, the crown falls from his head, and prac- 
tical men become laughing men at his expense. 

Such cases are by no means rare. Nor are 
cases of just the opposite one-sidedness, in which 
great executive faculty has back of it only the 
slenderest powers of scientific and philosophic 



THK SUPREME PERSON. 359 

thouglit. These men can ably carry out the plans 
of others ; they are good hands, if others will sup- 
ply the brains ; like some powerful engines, they 
will give great results provided the power is skil- 
fully turned on and superintended from without, 
as Murat was superintended by Napoleon. By 
themselves they amount to little. Out of poise — 
well rounded out on the one side and well rounded 
in on the other ; as unsymmetrical as the mere 
theorist, only in the opposite direction. 

Now Jesus was like neither of these. He was 
both philosopher and man of affairs, both brains 
and hands. He devised the gospel, and preached 
it himself, preached it with the same great skill 
and power with which he devised it. He planned 
the scheme of redemption, and personally carried 
out the plan in the same spirit of sublime w^isdom 
in which it was conceived. All the obscure prin- 
ciples and theorems that lay at the foundation of 
the enterprise for reconciling heaven and earth 
with each other, he from the beginning saw sub- 
limely through at a glance ; and when the time 
came for action, instead of calling in the aid of 
another party to carry out his ideas, he undertook 
their execution himself, and wTOUght at it w^th 
miracle and example and preaching and suffering 
and death after so sublime a fashion as was never 
seen before. 



360 SUPREME THINGS. 

Christ was throughout his own man of busi- 
ness. Agents in various capacities were indeed 
employed by him, but none of them ever equalled 
him as doer ; in fact all the skill and success they 
had were mere emanations from him. Paul ap- 
plied the gospel mightily because Christ wrought 
in him mightily. So it has been with all other 
successful workers in the Christian vineyard, for 
** without me ye can do nothing." To this very 
day he is the marrow of all devising and execu- 
ting in behalf of religion. Not one-sided this 
way, not one-sided that way, but nobly rounded 
out on both hands, was the perfectly proportioned 
and poised character of Jesus. 

Do you know yonder man ? Yes ; I know him 
well as a man of great solidity and breadth of 
mind, but withal exceeding slow. It takes his 
massive faculties a good while to get fully under 
way. He has great power, but no promptness in 
the application of the power. The man is no 
man for an emergency. He must take his time, 
or he can do nothing. If circumstances require 
his thoughts and judgment and will to move with 
great celerity, to act on the instant, to flash into 
deed, he is helpless. His mind needs whole 
hours, not to say days, to turn around in ; and 
while the great ship is slowly wearing about the 
critical moment for action passes away, and the 



THK supreme: person. 361 

prize which he might have had is gone beyond 
reach. Life is full of sharp corners, crises, ne- 
cessities for prompt action ; and such things are 
destructive to men who can only move like ele- 
phants when they need to spring like panthers. 

Here is one specimen of one-sidedness. Not 
far from this you shall find another specimen very 
similar to it, only now the deficiency is not one 
of promptitude and swiftness. It is a lack of that 
attribute which, under the much abused name of 
imagination, is the source or occasion of most of 
the graces and refinements of life. The man is 
broadly and solidly intellectual ; his judgment on 
all matters of mere fact and science is piercing 
and sound, he can reason and philosophize with 
the best, his facility at acquiring knowledge is 
very great. But to balance his mind properly 
there is needed over against this protuberant in- 
tellectuality an equally protuberant fancy to give 
tone and elevation and richness of color to the 
dry, hard, and abstract products of the reason. 
The brown earth must be draped in green and 
marbled with fruits and flowers ; the dull sky 
must be steeped in blue and sown with clouds 
and stars and rainbows and auroras ; then it is 
that we have the complete home which God de- 
signed for man. So to have a mind in its com- 
pletest form, in which all the utilities and graces 



362 SUPREME THINGS. 

of life shall find full expression, it is necessary 
that the bareness and hardness and homeliness of 
mere intellectuality shall be mingled with the 
moist freshness and glowing hues and beauteous 
forms of the equally divine imagination. And 
just here it is that this man fails. On the one 
side of him swells out in extraordinary develop- 
ment the muscular understanding and reason, 
while on the other side there is no corresponding 
development of those aesthetic faculties needed to 
balance and symmetrize the character. 

And not far from this man you may find an- 
other who is both like and unlike: like in being 
one-sided, but unlike in the nature of the one- 
sidedness. Behold the same intellectuality, but 
now joined to a very feeble emotional nature. As 
the phrase is, Much mind, but no heart. The in- 
tellectual element, the imaginative element, in 
short, all that is commonly meant by the word 
talents^ he possesses in massive strength; but, after 
all, he is a cold, unsympathizing, heartless man, 
with no geniality, enthusiasm, affections. He is 
a stone. He is tempered steel; glittering, sharp, 
able to cut his way victoriously through battal- 
ions, but cold, and capable of nothing but the 
feeblest warmth as it does its work. To balance 
the man, to put him into symmetry and best effi- 
ciency, he needs to be as largely developed on the 



THE SUPREME PERSON. ^ 363 

side of his feelings as on the side of his intellect 
and imagination. He must have as much power 
to feel as he has to think, as much heart as he 
has brains. 

Once more. Not far from this last ill-propor- 
tioned and ill-balanced character you shall find 
another, different from any yet mentioned. Be- 
hold him ! Profound and various talent, extensive 
information, a mind nobly fitted up with genius 
and learning and manifold accomplishment. But 
he has small power of communicating to others 
what he has. He lacks the gift of expression. 
He cannot successfully render into speech his 
noble ideas and feelings and knowledge. He is 
master of everything fitted to make him a prince 
among men save the faculty of telling what he 
knows and feels. His accomplished inner world 
has no adequate outlet for itself on society. Men 
of one tenth his general ability and information 
outshine him the moment he tries, with tongue 
or pen, to put himself in eflFective communication 
with his fellow-creatures. He is a cripple. He 
is a mere fraction for life's purposes. A one- 
handed, one-footed man is he, silently begging of 
all beholders to be put into proportion and equi- 
librium by the addition of as great a power for 
imparting as he has for possessing. 

Do you wish to see a character that makes no 



364 SUPREME THINGS. 

supplication of this sort? Would you see one 
whose mind is at the same time massive and 
active, profoundly solid and splendidly brilliant, 
full of brains and full of heart, supremely apt at 
knowing and feeling, and also at telling ? Then 
look at that one complete man furnished by the 
six thousand years of human history, that single 
perfectly rounded out and symmetrical character 
which all the ages and generations have suc- 
ceeded in putting on exhibition — unparalleled 
Jesus Christ. The breadth and acumen of his 
genius, even at the age of twelve years, amazed 
the ablest scholars of his nation. His maturity 
confounded and mastered them. And how prompt- 
ly and easily was it done ! No sooner was the 
captious and knotty question, which his crafty 
enemies had united in studying out, fairly out of 
their mouths, than there came the silencing reply. 
His massive faculties went to their mark like a 
flash. And he was not mere understanding — 
plain, solid, leviathan understanding, moving on 
its orbit with the precision and, when necessary, 
with the speed of a planet; he was understanding 
steeped in parables and imagery and emotion, a 
planet coursing along in vernal bloom and beauty 
and carrying deep within a molten heart. Con- 
founder of Gamaliels, he was the man for sympa- 
thy and tears, the man to love and pity other men 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 365 

and to be touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities, the man to live and die for others who were 
ready to live and almost to die against him. 
Master of wisdom; penetrator of secrets; adept in 
all reason, principles, philosophies, facts— how 
nobly could he translate to others the truth and 
majesty and mental wealth of every kind within 
him ! It is said that a certain man used language 
like an emperor, and a certain other like a magi- 
cian: we say that Jesus Christ used it like a 
divinity. "Never man spake like this man." 
As religious conversationalist, as theological lec- 
turer to his class of apostles, as orator to syna- 
gogues and wayside congregations, men hung on 
the mysterious and penetrating eloquence of his 
eye and lips and features as never men hung 
before or since. Being the Word, he was himself 
both the truth and its perfect expression. He 
was the mouth of God— the art of communication 
personified and glorified. He was both reservoir 
and conduit of the divine fulness ; perpetually 
full, and yet always freely imparting. All other 
men are, more or less, leaning towers of Pisa— out 
of poise, more weight accumulated on the one 
side of them than on the other; but the character 
of Jesus stands plumb to the centre of its base, 
and defies all the shocks of time and eternity to 
disturb for one moment its mighty equilibrium. 



I ' 



\ 



366 SUPREME THINGS. 

No man ever possessed either active or pas- 
sive virtue and was entirely destitute of the 
other. But it is a not uncommon one-sidedness 
to have the one form of virtue in laro^e decree 
and the other relatively very feeble. Men very 
sluggish in active labor for God and humanity are 
sometimes very good at taking quietly and sub- 
missively the various trials of life. On the other 
hand, men who are warmly active in all the ex- 
ternal work of religion sometimes show small 
grace in the way of enduring the divine will and 
serenely bearing up under the petty ills and vex- 
ations of ordinary life. Of course, the ideal of 
character at this point is to have the great ac- 
tive virtue matched by as great a passive, so 
that a lack on the one side shall never bring a 
fulness on the other into suspicion. People are 
tempted to say of the conspicuous Christian 
worker who yet is apt at impatience and fretful- 
ness and despondency under life's trials, *' Per- 
haps the activity of this inconsistent man comes 
from mere ostentation and constitutional restless- 
ness.'' On the other hand, people are tempted to 
say of the quiet burden-bearer who yet shows lit- 
tle disposition to labor actively for God and hu- 
manity, ^'Perhaps the patience of this inconsis- 
tent man comes rather from a sluggish and easy 
temperament than from grace." But it is a 



THE SUPRHMK PERSON. 367 

beautiful and convincing sight when a man ap- 
pears well rounded out on both the active and the 
passive side of his religion, when he acts with all 
the diligence of a Christian Paul and endures 
with all the patience of a Christian Job. That is 
a shining example. It has in it the light of 
seven days. 

See such a shining case of symmetry and 
equilibrium in Jesus. Equally good was he at 
doing and enduring. On the one hand, his life 
w^as swollen with tasks and an indefatigable per- 
formance of them : on the other hand, his life 
was swollen with trials and a divine bearing of 
them. lyight of one sort shone over against 
equal light of another sort ; and the two, min- 
gling, made white light. Massive masonry of 
goodness here was balanced by massive ma- 
sonry of goodness there: fair towers and battle- 
ments of active virtue on the one side of the 
great temple were offset by equally fair and 
great towers and battlements of passive virtue on 
the other side of it. Who can say which was the 
more splendid — Christ's career as a labor, or his 
career as a suffering? No leaning tower at this 
point was he, but one built up plumb and sym- 
metrical as well as huge on its heavenly base; a 
model for all future architects of character, and 
the first wonder of the world. 



368 SUPREME THINGS. 

Such are a few hints at the completeness there 
is in Christ. They have their value; but, from 
the nature of the case, no complete account of a 
perfect person can be given in this way. We 
have to add to the illustrative examples that 
touch the great nature only here and there with 
their spots of illumination, such broad, pictorial, 
potential statements as we find in the Scriptures 
in regard to the ^'perfect man, the measure of 
the stature of the fulness of Christ." These tell 
us that the symmetry which we can see in parts 
of Christ belongs to him as a whole. There is 
nothing deficient, nothing redundant. He is like 
his own Bible, to which we must add nothing 
and from which we must take nothing away. 
He is not an arc, but a circumference. He is 
not a fraction, but an integer; not a pinnacle of 
the temple, not a tower, not a porch, not the gate 
Beautiful, not the court of the Gentiles, nor any 
other court, not even the Holy of holies, but the 
whole great temple from pinnacle to foundation, 
with all its belongings. 

The pigmy may be well proportioned. But 
the symmetry of the pigmy is one thing, the 
symmetry of a giant is another thing, and the 
symmetry of an infinite nature a vastly difierent 
thing still. It is this last that belongs to Christ. 
This epical Person, who mysteriously includes in 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 369 

himself all the fulness of the Godhead as well as 
all the fulness of humanity, has claims on our 
attention beyond any and all other persons. He 
is of unbounded significance to us. His com- 
pleteness, like a universal joint, gives him free- 
dom of movement in every direction, accom- 
plishes him for all situations, adapts him royally 
to all the great needs of mankind. Whether we 
need example or teaching or ruling or saving, 
he can be a magnificent helper. There is noth- 
ing which this great, complete Friend cannot do 
for us. We have unlimited scope for admiration, 
confidence, and love. And this is the complete 
Person after whom religion proposes to shape us; 
for we are to '^grow up into him in all things, 
who is the head/' 



Supreme Things. 2d. 



XX, 



Tlie kprems Persoi?. 



PART SECOND. 



AS A FRIEND. 



THE supreme; person. 373 



XX.— THE SUPREME PERSON. (2.) 

It is said of a certain writer that he touched 
no subject which he did not adorn. We may 
speak in a similar vein of Christ. He ennobles 
and glorifies every relation he sustains. Is he a 
son ? He is such a son as never parents had, be- 
fore or since. Is he a citizen ? He is such a citi- 
zen as never had his peer for social usefulness — 
never needing either restraint or prompting from 
the laws of the land. Is he a teacher? He is 
such a teacher as never sat in the seat of Gama- 
liel or trod the groves of Academus or waked 
immortal echoes in the porticos of Alexandria 
and Rome. Is he a ruler ? No other sovereign 
ever sat on so splendid a throne, numbered so 
many subjects, enacted such admirable laws, or 
administered them so wisely and beneficially. Is 
he a Saviour ? He is such a Saviour as meets our 
grandest conceptions of such a character; quite 
perfect, able to save to the uttermost, superbly 
answering to the want of every human being. Is 
he 2l giver? He is such a giver, both as to what 
he gives and how he gives, as is unexampled out 
of the Godhead — shining and blazing in this char- 



374 SUPREME THINGS. 

acter with such a sumptuous magnificence as to 
dazzle and enchant all earnest beholders. 

Men are chiefly receivers. When they give, 
it is generally for a consideration; and what they 
give is never, even in the case of the most benev- 
olent persons, any appreciable fraction of what 
they receive. It is not so with Christ. He is 
chiefly, if not altogether, a giver. Men can bring 
to him nothing w^hicli is not his already. His 
treasury is too full to admit of being made fuller 
by us or by any. It is crowded, . compacted, 
rounded to overflowing already. So he cannot re- 
ceive. But he can give — and does. It is a real giv- 
ing: no remuneration is sought or had, save the 
satisfaction of a benevolent heart. We are needy; 
our treasury is naturally a great void; it rings hol- 
low w^hen a coin is cast into it, and seems to say, 
''Poor, blind, naked, and in want of all things:" 
and so Christ rises from the midst of his abund- 
ance and, having received gifts for men, turns 
giver after a wonderful and unequalled fashion. 
"Without money and without price," he says; 
and opens his hand above us — a hand wider than 
the world — as hand was never opened before. 

See him as he was nearly nineteen centuries 
ago. See him scattering truth with a free hand, 
coined and uncoined: the yellow dust, the mas- 
sive ingot, the milled and rounded money with 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 375 

Heaven's own face stamped into its purged and 
polished gold: the sharply defined doctrines, the 
solid miscellany of great principles, the shadowy 
and winged parables. He gave the age more 
religious truth in a better way than have all the 
apostles of sweetness and light who have under- 
taken to shine into the ignorance of mankind; 
and, to make the gift a permanent one, he put it 
into the ark of inspired writing and floated it 
down the stream of time to every age and nation. 
Not content with this sort of giving, for which 
man gave nothing back, Jesus proceeded to give 
miracles in vast abundance. The blind saw, the 
deaf heard, the lame walked, the lepers were 
cleansed, the devils cast out, the dead raised. 
The Giver opened his great hand and gave truth 
to the souls of men: he opened his great hand and 
gave deliverance and health and life to their 

bodies. 

Not content with these sorts of unremunerated 

criving, Jesus went on to give pardons for sin, 
Christian virtues, salvations and possibilities of 
salvation for both the souls and bodies of men. 
With these he gave precious hopes, unspeakable 
consolations, joys of the Holy Ghost such as the 
world can neither give nor take away. As means 
to these he gave his own temporary exile from 
heaven, years of toil and vigil, a great fight of 



3/6 suprkmp: things. 

aiSictions; finally, liis very life itself, all steeped 
in the punitive justice of God. As means to 
these he gave answers to prayer, endless provi* 
deuces, his careful example, the personal agency 
of the Holy Ghost. These things he gave to 
man; poured them out into the lap of the world 
for no compensation whatever. These things, 
making as they do an immense and immeasur- 
able gift, he still gives, and is sure to continue to 
give as long as the world of men shall stand* 

Did men ever see richer gifts than are some of 
these which Jesus gives? During the past year 
many a fair and costly offering of loving friend- 
ship or exacting fashion has found its way to ad- 
miring eyes and hands. Brides have gone forth 
from patrician and sumptuous homes blazing in 
jewels, with which sumptuous parents and other 
friends have greeted the new life. Presents have 
been sent from crowned heads to one another; 
and the vase, the statue, the painting, the gem, 
shot forth rays of costly beauty worth the fee sim- 
ple of a province. Solomon had magnificent ad- 
mirers; and, among them, the Queen of Sheba 
presented heaps of rare spices and golden talents 
and precious stones, till men marvelled at the 
riches of the torrid South. But what are such 
things compared with the eternal heaven that 
Christ gives to some men and offers to all, com- 



the; suprkmk person. 377 

pared witli tlie Holy Gliost and the new heart 
and the ripened holiness which Christ gives or 
offers as a preparation for heaven ? These Chris- 
tian treasures are ''the pearl of greatest price the 
whole creation round." Had one the freedom of 
all the regalia-rooms, ancient and modern, he 
could not pluck from the hoarded sceptres and 
signets and diadems and state robes stiff with 
riches, jewels enough to buy a single one of 
heaven's innumerable days or the pardon of a 
single one of his innumerable sins. Had one the 
range of all the treasure-vaults where corpora- 
tions and governments crowd the coin and capital 
that represent the whole business and income of 
our modern civilization, he could not carry away 
from them enough to balance one drop of Jesus' 
blood or one of the smallest of Christian virtues. 

Could we bring together all the presents that 
men during the past year have made, we should 
find them immensely various; various in sub- 
stance, in form, in quality, in magnitude, in 
beauty, in use. A cup of cold water to the 
thirsty wayfarer, a flower or book to a friend, a 
vase of malachite to Victoria, a duchy to Alfieri, 
an empire to William, and between these ex- 
tremes other diversities almost endless. But such 
various giving as this comes from a great variety 
of givers. Their number is the almost uncount- 



378 SUPREMK THINGS. 

able number of men. But we can tell of one 
Giver who m©re than matches these many in the 
vast variety of his gifts. That crust of bread 
which one of five thousand is eating, or that bit 
of silver which Peter finds in the mouth of a fish 
— Christ gives that, as he does that single rain- 
drop that slants down its moist coolness on the 
parched eyelid of an American believer in this 
year of grace. Do you see that solitary conver- 
sion that shoots gloriously down out of heaven to 
the dying thief, or that shower of conversions 
that, like showering stars of November, shoots 
down with trains of glory on Jerusalem keeping 
unprecedented Pentecost ? Well, Christ, the 
Spirit-sender, gives that, as he does pardons and 
sainthoods and revivals in many lands of to-day. 
What a difference between the bit of bread that 
feeds a single body and the revival that saves a 
whole community of souls ! And yet this im- 
mense interval is filled with all conceivable 
grades and measures and colors of gifts, from that 
which shines and triumphs as heaven (for indeed 
it is heaven), down to the limpid water-drop. 
Christ has received gifts for men in endless vari- 
ety; and what we may ask for at his hands is 
anything that is covered by the broad promise, 
'^ No good thing will he withhold from them that 
walk uprightly." 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 379 

How many different beauties fall within the 
tound of an extensive landscape ; no two rounded 
pebbles alike, no two green blades of grass, no 
two painted buttercups, each more gloriously ar- 
rayed than Solomon, no two tree-leaves that so 
beautifully shimmer between breeze and sun- 
beam, no two polished insects, or those flying 
flowers that we call birds, or those grazing ones 
which we call flocks and herds, or those sove- 
reign and immortal ones that we call men ; how 
astonishingly diverse in form and aspect and qual- 
ity and use are these fair and excellent creations ! 
Not less diverse are the gifts of Christ, chief of 

givers. 

When Jesus was on the earth he made a busi- 
ness of giving. Coming not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, his gifts followed one an- 
other in swift succession. Miracle almost touched 
miracle. Teaching almost felt the breath of teach- 
ing. " Thy sins be forgiven thee ;" " Rise up and 
walk ;" "I have prayed for thee ;" "He opened 
his mouth and taught them, saying"— such be- 
neficent activities kept following one another like 
the tattoos of some busy heavenly drum. In 
close procession, blessing fairly treading on the 
heels of blessing, good and perfect gifts panting 
on the fresh footsteps of their brothers and sisters, 
come the presents of Jesus now as in the days of 



380 SUPREME THINGS. j 

yore when he was a visible giver. Have you just : 
received something from Christ? You will not 
have to wait long before receiving something 
else. One king is immediately succeeded by an- 
other. There is no interregnum. You have 
hardly opened the door to one friend before you 
hear the knock of another. In short, Christ is 
your sleepless Providence. A man is counted 
liberal if he makes you valuable presents a few 
times a year ; and should he be so open-handed 
and open-hearted as to send you daily something 
well worth accepting, after the manner of Cyrus 
the younger, you would open eyes wide on such a 
feat of generosity. But this heavenly Giver is an 
hourly giver. Nay ; like the ticking of a clock 
tap at our doors and windows his common bless- 
ings for body and soul, while greater blessings 
melodiously strike the hours, and greater bless- 
ings still at still larger intervals play through 
whole anthems on our panes and pannels. We 
are not astonished at this ; we should be aston- 
ished if it were not so ; we are so used to having 
an almost ceaseless arrival of presents from that 
great Christian Providence called Jesus, to whom 
has been given all power in heaven and in earth. 
For the most part the givers known to us are 
transient in their giving. A few presents, then 
again a few ; at last entire and permanent cessa- 



THK SUPREME PERSON. 381 

tion ; such is the experience of ahnost every 
beneficiary in regard to almost every human 
benefactor. Weeks, and even days, are enough 
to exhaust the generosity of some of your friends; 
others do not cease to be generous, but they cease 
to live or cease to be able. The cases are very 
few (could you not count them on the fingers of 
one hand ?) in which people of your acquaintance 
have had all their lives long a steady stream of 
bounty coming in on them from any one human 
source. Here and there the case happens, but it 
is a phenomenon — a phenomenon after the style 
of Christ. Jesus is one of the few lasting givers ; 
nay, thanks to his great and constant heart, he is 
an everlasting giver. While visibly on the earth 
he kept up giving to the last. Since then he has 
kept up giving through every age until now. 
Onward through the ages, as long as ages shall 
be, he will continue to give. True, he will not 
everlastingly give to all sorts of persons without 
regard to the use they make of his gifts. He has 
plainly said that such as in the present life abuse 
the opportunities and gifts which fall so profusely 
about them from his reversed horn of plenty, shall 
in the next life get from him no gifts at all save 
gifts of punishment. But he gives blessed and 
blessing gifts steadily to all men as long as their 
present life lasts ; and to those who become pen- 



383 SUPRKMK THINGS. 

itent he continues to give through a majestic for 
ever. Here is stretch of giving for you ! Here is 
a magnificent vista of benefits for keen-eyed, far- 
seeing men to look down through if they can ! Is 
not this the very chief of givers — who gives so 
largely, so variously, so frequently, and so long ? 
Not every giver gives wisely. To secure best 
results from gifts discrimination must be used in 
bestowing them. To prevent very bad results, 
regard must be had to times, places, persons. For 
different persons different sorts of truth, different 
sorts of providences, different methods of religious 
cultivation are adopted. The gifts that would 
bless one would destroy another. The methods 
and means of moral culture that would build up 
one soul would tear down another. Not a few 
free-handed persons do more harm by their giving 
than they would by withholding. They scatter, 
and men sicken, perhaps die. They are gener- 
ous with perhaps rarest and costliest things, but 
want of adaptation spoils everything. Who is 
a wise giver? Who knows how to give with 
choicest discrimination? Who is there against 
whom not a single unsuitable present can be 
charged in all the billions on billions which he 
is sending to mankind ? We know his name, and 
that with such a knowledge as his, and such a 
benevolence, and such a command of materials, 



THE supreme; person. 383 

and such a command of himself, Jesus can never 
fail to send the right present to the right point at 
the right time. He, if no other ever does, man- 
ages successfully the difficult feat of giving to 
every one his portion in due season. Never a 
gift from his hand fell inopportunely. He never 
sent a present that was unadapted. His eye 
searches out that state of a man which is so 
poorly read by even his most intimate human 
neighbor, not to say by himself ; and the tangled 
mystery is at a glance luminous with noonday, 
and the great Friend says, ''This is what he 
needs ; this is what, all things considered, it is 
best he should have ;" and the heavenly parcel is 
made up and sent, and it touches the proprieties 
of the case a^with the point of a needle. Whether 
it be a crust of bread or a friend or an office or a 
religious privilege or a pardon or a recovery from 
sickness or the kingdom of heaven, the gift never 
goes to the wrong place. Christ's hand knows 
no mistaken kindnesses. Short-sighted favors 
that please now and plague by-and-by never come 
from him. He never has occasion to say, ' ' I am 
sorry ; it were better had I not given it ; it were 
better had I sent him something else in the place 
of it." Too great a present? No. Too small? 
No. Better a different sort of thing? No. Better 
sent yesterday than to-day? No. Better sent by 



384 SUPREME THINGS. 

another messenger or by another path ? No. In 
short, it is all just as it should be, to the very 
wrapper and cord. Most discriminating and judi- 
cious of givers, who, although he makes a busi- 
ness of giving, and is every moment despatching 
innumerable expresses on his benevolent errands 
in every direction, has never occasion to recall 
a messenger or alter an address. 

The great charm of all this heavenly giving 
is that it is done so freely and gladly. The heart 
of Jesus goes with every gift that he makes. He 
is one who has long had it for a doctrine that it is 
more blessed to give than to receive ; one who 
has always loved a cheerful giver, and led the 
van of such givers with a hearty generosity most 
beautiful and sublime to see. He does not give 
as from the compulsions of duty, it is as from the 
joyful freedom of a privilege. It is the keenest 
pleasure to him to put his hand into his treasury 
and draw out thence help for his friends and his 
poor. He loves to shake the heavenly tree and 
see its ripe fruit fall into the lap of men. He 
mightily delights in largess and to see heaven's 
broad pieces, as sown from his full hand, scaling 
the celestial walls and turrets and falling in a 
golden shower through our atmosphere. Because 
he needs to be prayed to for some of his blessings, 
and that perseveringly ; because men will gen- 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 385 

erally receive from him in proportion to their rev- 
erent importunity; we too often get an impression 
of him as one who gives grudgingly, and is ever 
on the w^atch for a just occasion to stop or stint 
his bounty. But the conditions attached to his 
gifts are for our sakes, not his. He is bound to 
so give as to benefit us by the giving ; and hence 
it is that he puts us on begging for what he is 
most eaeer to bestow. Benefits do not have to be 
wrested from his unwilling hands, as they have 
to be from the hands of many who go by the 
name of givers. Does he hate to see the face of a 
solicitor? Would he be glad of an excuse for giv- 
ing nothing? And when he does at length make 
up his mind to part with a pittance, does the part- 
ing cost him a pang ? Friend ! this is not Jesus 
Christ. Who can for a moment imagine that this 
is the portrait of the great Giver who gave him- 
self for us ? Be sure that he is a giver of quite 
another order. He always disburses with right 
regal spontaneity. His bounty runs and leaps on 
its way to us. It is not a stream running up hill, 
but a stream running down in many an arrowy, 
rapid, and sparkling cascade till it empties itself, 
a joyously shouting and foaming sheet, into the 
great hungry gulf of our needs. Prince of willing 
as well as of wise, frequent, various, lasting, and 
abundant giving is Jesus Christ ! 

Supreme Things. 2 ^ 



XXI. 



Tte hmw Persoi]. 



PART THIRD. 



JUST THE HELPER WE NEED. 



THE SUPRKMK PERSON. 389 



XXL— THE SUPREME PERSON. (3.) 

Our present life is largely a want. We have 
our advantages ; but what is needed to make 
them perfect is, in most cases, greater than what 
we actually possess. We have our advantages; 
but those we have not, and yet are capable of, 
are more and mightier than those we have. 

What makes human life so much a want is 
chiefly its character in four respects. It is an 
ignorance, a danger, a trial, and a sin. 

We have to shade very deeply the symbolic 
maps that express the degree of enlightenment 
in many lands; and in those lands that we ven- 
ture to blazon and call enlightened we know 
well there still remains a vast amount of igno- 
rance and mistake (one form of ignorance) on the 
most important subjects. 

To the want of knowledge we must add a 
want of security. We look in one direction, and 
we see an army of natural evils threatening us; in 
another, and lo, an army of spiritual evils. As 
sparks tend to fly upward, so we tend to trouble; 
and temptations to sin are so many and pressing 
as to make our standing difficult, and, without 
much painstaking, impossible. 



390 



SUPREME THINGS. 



It were well if this were the w^orst that could 
be said of our condition; but it is not. Full often 
the threat of trial passes into fulfilment; and a 
variety of sufferings too numerous for mention, 
and too well known to need it, actually pierce us 
with the darts they have been shaking in our 
faces. ''The thing which I greatly feared is 
come upon me.'' 

But, many as are our trials, they are not equal 
in number to our sins. The temptation which 
assaults us is so often the temptation that over- 
comes, that any man with the frankness of David 
could say as David did, ''Mine iniquities have 
taken hold upon me (or, overtaken me); they are 
more than the hairs of mv head." 

Just here lies the greatness of our occasion for 
Christ and the greatness of his actual value to 
us. Were human life a fulness instead of a de- 
ficiency, and a supply instead of a demand; were 
we without ignorance to be taught and dangers 
to be warded off and sorrows to be borne and sins 
to be forsaken and forgiven, we should find that 
Christ, however useful to other beings, would be 
of no use to us. But, as matters stand, there is 
room for Christ to make himself of unspeakable 
value to us; and we believe that Christ so minis- 
ters to our various need as to lay a solid founda- 
tion for that superlative estimate of him as a 



TIIK SUPREME PERSON. 391 

benefactor which the Scriptures give and which 
is expressed in the line, 

" Thou, O Christ, art all I want." 

I. Human Life as an Ignorance. 
Darkness covered the earth and gross dark- 
ness the people. The night was long, the night 
was dark; a few tapers had feebly glimmered 
here and there for a moment amid the profound 
glooms; it was time for the day to come. It 
came in the person of Jesus. '' Rabbi, we know 
that thou art a teacher come from God." Nico- 
demus was right. Jesus came from heaven for a 
purpose of teaching; for the purpose among oth- 
ers of dispelling the darkness on religious sub- 
jects that rested on the world. "That it might 
be fulfilled which w^as spoken by Esaias the 
prophet, saying. The land of Zabulon and the 
land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, be- 
yond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; the people 
who sat in darkness saw great light; and to 
them who sat in the region and shadow of death 
light is sprung up." Accordingly Jesus devoted 
his whole public life on the earth to the business 
of religious instruction and'to working the mira- 
cles which gave that instruction its authority. 
An inspired record was made of his teaching as 
illustrated by his miracles and example ; and 



392 SUPREME THINGS. 

througli this he has ever since been teaching the 
nations. 

Examining this teaching we find it distin- 
guished by some striking traits. The knowledge 
it imparts is of the most useful and noble descrip- 
tion. The Teacher come from God might have 
enlightened us on the science of health or of gov- 
ernment or of the stars, and in so doing he would 
have done us some service. But this kind of 
information is of small account in comparison 
with another; and so he passed the inferior by, 
neglecting the good for the sake of the indispen- 
sable which sanctifies it. He spoke only of reli- 
gion, its doctrines and duties. Sacred truths, 
dimly seen before, he made plainer; sacred facts, 
w^holly unknown to men, at his bidding rose like 
suns above the horizon. He explained the past, 
he unfolded the future. The character of God, 
our responsibility to him, the value of the human 
soul, thd^ brotherhood of mankind, the universal- 
ity of opportunity, the plan of salvation, the 
powers of the world to come — he turned on these 
old truths a radiance that almost made them 
new; while he set beside them in the firmament 
such new or unrecognized truths as those of the 
Trinity, the mission of the Holy Ghost, a divine 
atonement, the mediatorship of the Messiah, the 
resurrection of the body, a day of judgment, the 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 



393 



new heavens and earth. Of such high and splen- 
did knowledge a little is enough to make a pre- 
cious teaching; but Christ imparted of it largely. 
If all the new light he cast on old truths, and all 
the new truths he put in more than the old light, 
were withdrawn, the chief glory would be o-one 
from the Bible and from Christendom. 

Besides, he is the instructor, not of one gener- 
ation only, but of many generations; may I not 
say of all ? His contemporaries heard his great 
teachings with the ear; the people of every age 
since have heard them with the eye; they are so 
hearing them now; and they will so hear them 
during all the ages to come (at last universally 
hear them); for the Bible is not one of the per- 
ishable books, but will go to every creature and 
become a tmiversal text-book. And just as pre- 
cious things are being freshly drawn every year 
from the bosom of the earth; just as the book of 
nature at large yields to skilful and patient ques- 
tioning and year by year gives new truths to our 
sciences, so that other Book, which is Christ in 
print, may be expected to furnish new treasures 
as the ages advance to the questionings of devout 
scholars. The parchment is being slowly un- 
rolled. One has been found worthy to open the 
book and to loose the seals thereof. As to the 
generations before the advent, these were taught 



394 SUPREME THINGS. 

either by the Old Testament, whose writers spake 
only what ''the Spirit of Christ which was in 
them did signify," or by those unwritten tradi- 
tions which among all nations have possessed 
certain fundamental religious truths first given to 
the infant race by its Creator, who created all 
things by Jesus Christ. No man has seen God 
the Father at any time; and all the theophanies 
of the past have been those of the Only-begotten 
Son who hath declared him. 

And see, Christ grants his teaching to all 
classes as well as to all times. The priests and 
rulers heard him; they were welcome to learn. 
The publicans and paupers and harlots heard; 
they too were welcome. None were too high to 
sit at his feet, and none were too low; none were 
too bad, and none were too good; none too wise 
and none too scant in knowledge or faculty. The 
same wide distribution of religious knowledge 
which he practised himself he charged on his 
apostles; and when they went forth to all points 
of the compass, it was to carry the gospel to 
every creature. No discrimination was made in 
favor of kings and sanhedrins and senates and 
peerages. Unlike the old philosophers, they 
knew no privileged class, no outer and inner cir- 
cle, no exoteric and esoteric. And their succes- 
sor, the New Testament, refuses to be cooped up 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 395 

in any monastery or school or pope or hierarchy 
or commentator, and does not allow that any of 
the powers that be may trammel its travels with 
their passports. The Holy Spirit, the one official 
Commentator on the Word, who takes the things 
of Christ and shows them to us — when was the 
teaching Spirit known to practise any favoritism 
in the exercise of his office ? "They shall all be 
taught of God " is his motto. A willing pupilage 
is all he asks for. Full well do w^e know that 
weak and despised men have been taught in the 
things of the kingdom till out of the mouths of 
babes praise has been perfected, and the foolish 
things of the world have been able to confound 
the things that are wise. We have knowm of 
men wonderfully taught by Christ, though with- 
out almost all other teaching — men who have sat 
at his feet in conscious feebleness and scantiness 
of earthlv learninof and in the rao^s of the most 
menial earthly state, until they knew more of 
what it most becomes man to know than many a 
robed and decorated schoolman, and greatly more 
than belonged naturally to their grasp of mind 
and opportunities. 

Christ also adapts his teaching perfectly to the 
characters and exigencies of his pupils, innumer- 
able as these are. We praise the teachers in our 
schools and colleges if they show in their narrow 



396 SUPREME THINGS. 

Spheres something of this faculty of adaptation. 
It is a rare faculty and not easily exercised, even 
where the pupils are very limited in number. But 
what an achievement it must be to perfectly fit a 
teaching to the whole world of mankind with 
its innumerable diversities ! Yet this was what 
Christ did. Some gleams of his wisdom in ac- 
commodating his instructions to character and 
circumstances appear in the record of his personal 
ministry. They serve to illustrate a fact known 
from other sources. He knew how to speak to 
the Pharisee, and how to the publican, and how 
to the child. Every turn of mind received the 
truth it needed in the way it needed. He under- 
stood human nature in all its varieties as only its 
Creator can understand it. He needed not that 
any should testify of man, for he knew what was 
in man. He knew the whole art of the word 
spoken in due season, and it has not become a 
lost art .with him to this day. When he removed 
himself beyond the reach of earthly eyes and ears, 
he neither discontinued teaching nor discontinued 
his acquaintance with every peculiarity in the 
character and circumstances of his countless pu- 
pils. His tuition still works on a universal joint. 
The sword that issues from his mouth still turns 
everyway. For his omniscient Spirit now goes 
with his Bible as its true yoke-fellow and mani- 



THE supreme: person. 397 

fold adapter. So I can have the particular truth I 
need at any given moment, in just the form and 
way suited to my personal and circumstantial 
peculiarities. 

It is also characteristic of the teaching of 
Christ that it is given with wonderful patience 
and gentleness. If the Jews refused to hear, he 
still continued to speak. If their ears were dull 
of hearing, he made his voice more penetrating. 
With a diligence and tenderness that never re- 
laxed he did his work as a prophet amid the slow 
of heart and gainsaying, setting his ministers an 
example of invincible though prudent and loving 
perseverance in preaching, whether men hear or 
forbear. So he is doing now. We are all wit- 
nesses. Withdrawn as he is from our sight, the 
school of schools is still in session, and the great 
tuition goes bravely on summer and winter, day 
and night. Without any angry thunders, but 
w^ith a great deal of soft and quiet shining, he 
puts the oft repelled doctrines and duties of reli- 
gion into our eyes and ears and hearts. No 
human teacher bears so meekly with us as does 
this divine one. Dullness will soon discourage 
my labors on the education of a child. Inatten- 
tion and idleness will soon weary me into vexa- 
tion and vacation. A stubborn refusal of instruc- 
tion will soon kindle my indignation and quench 



39? SUPREME THINGS. 

my zeal. But this one teacher Christ, by his 
Word and Spirit, ministers his indispensable tui- 
tion to us just as he ministers the light of day. 
When have days ceased because men are wicked? 
When have moon and constellations failed to 
adorn our nights because we have scanted our 
measure of Christian service? Like the ordi- 
nances of heaven are the patient and tender visits 
to us of that Spirit who in Christ's name con- 
tinues Christ's teaching in the world, putting his 
white thoughts into our black hearts as softly as 
settle the snow-flakes out of heaven on the be- 
nighted and wintry earth. 

Ah, what a night ! Night in the depths and 
night in the heights ; night on the right hand 
and night on the left ; night among the masses 
with their vacancies and superstitions, and if pos- 
sible still deeper night among the philosophers, 
whose endless contentions among themselves 
loudly confess that they cannot send a spark 
athwart the gloom ! Then came, not the light of 
Asia, but the Light of the World. In him were 
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, 
and he spake them out as never man spake. His 
words were pearls. No Socrates with his familiar 
colloquies, no Plato with his lofty imaginings, 
none of their successors in modern times, however 
famous and eloquent, ever rose to the level of this 



u 



the: suprj^me person. 399 

divine Teacher or of any Christian pulpit that 
echoes him. The multitude heard him gladly. 
They wondered at the gracious words that pro- 
ceeded out of his mouth, and as many as accepted 
as well as wondered became wise to salvation. 

He teaches still in the same peerless way, the 
noblest matter in the noblest manner. This is 
what we mean by the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures. The value of such a tuition as this is in- 
computable. To impart the noblest and most 
vital knowledge, to impart much of it, to impart 
it to all classes and all generations, to impart it 
in the most perfect way and with exact adaptation 
to all the varieties of character and circumstance 
among men, to impart it with unflagging assi- 
duity and tenderness, despite indifference, post- 
ponements, and absolute rejections, where can 
any tuition be found that can for a moment be 
compared with this ! Could so dark a night as 
ours naturally is do without some such celestial 
shining? Would not the man w^ho has the 
world's interests at heart prefer to see it robbed 
of all other light to having it lose the Light that 
lighteth every man that cometh to the world? Let 
all the Alexandrians burn, let the British museum 
and all other collections of literature and science 
disappear in their own smoke — the wise well- 
wisher of his kind could not but choose to have 



400 SUPREMK THINGS. 

all such treasuries clean emptied into oblivion, 
with all the blight which such a vandalism would 
bring on the conveniences and splendor of our 
living, rather than see withdrawn from among us 
the lessons of the Teacher come from God. 

11. Human Life as a Danger. 

Our air is thick with arrows; we are in danger 
of being wounded, even to death. We have be- 
come so used to this perilous condition (in fact 
having never known any other) that we are like 
men who have always lived amid ugly faces or 
landscapes ; the ugliness does not generally im- 
press them, though perhaps intellectually con- 
fessed. 

Diseases threaten us. Accidents lie in wait 
for us at every turn. Not a wood but contains an 
ambush, not a thicket out of which a lion may 
not spring, not a step which may not start a ser- 
pent, not a mouthful of food or drink which is not 
liable to strangle or poison us. There is not a 
hospital anywhere that does not say Beware from 
every cot; not an article in the Materia Medica or 
in the surgeon's omnium of instruments but says, 
You may have need of me ; not an injury or an ail 
spoken of in any pathological library or in any 
history which is not at least a possibility to us. 
We are hunted. Were it not that familiarity 



TH£; SUPREME PERSON. 401 

dulls our sense of things, we should be haunted 
as well as hunted — haunted with a terrible sense 
of insecurity. As it is, there are times when we 
are greatly disturbed as we see the red flag waved 
at us from almost every object, and hear our doors 
rapped and our windows tapped daily by a legion 
of natural evils which have vexed and finally 
carried oflf all previous generations. 

And moral dangers abound. It is a world of 
temptation. There is not a form of sin known to 
prison and police and the all-comprehending Ten 
Commandments, to the insidious beginnings of 
which we are not open, and in favor of which 
there is not a subtle drawing within; not a 
crime mentioned in history, not a wickedness 
that frightens us in a fiend, not a depravity that 
can be fashioned by our imaginations, but says 
from afar, ^' Be afraid. I am travelling in your di- 
rection." There are seeds within you which only 
need to be ripened; there are combustible ele- 
ments which only need a spark from possible cir- 
cumstances, in order to kindle, and in time bla^e 
into as formidable a flame as earth or hell ever 
saw. And then natural depravity has a preter- 
natural assistant. *' Your adversary the devil, as 
a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he 
may devour." Not believe in a personal Satan ! 
It were hardly more dangerous not to believe in 

Supreme Thin.-s. 26 



40Z SUPREME THINGS. 

a personal God. Sagacious, diligent, active, un- 
wearied, experienced — he Is a mighty foe, to be 
watched against and fought with the panoply of 
God. I do not believe In either the omnipresence 
or the omnipotence of Satan; but that he is a ter- I 
rible tempter, and brings terrible reinforcements 
to the natural evil of our hearts, is clearly re- II 
vealed. Between this foe and their own naughty 
selves all men are naturally In danger of eternal 
death. | 

Now Christ is a mighty safeguard amid these 
great dangers — by far the mightiest safeguard the 
world has ever seen. Having received the king- 
dom, he undertakes to shield his people from all 
real harm, whether to body or soul. All things 
that befall them in this world, however ill-look- 
ing, shall work for their good; and from all the 
penalties of the next world he secures them by 
his atonement. So his faithful followers have 
absolutely nothing to fear. He is their Ark 
of safety. He is their good Shepherd, who is 
as careful to defend as he is to feed his flock. 
Thanks to this great Friend who is able to save 
to the uttermost, angry-looking heavens and a 
quaking earth need not disturb his people for a 
moment! They can well say, "Though the 
earth be removed, and though the mountains be 
carried Into the midst of the sea; though the 



THE supreme: person. 403 

waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the 
mountains shake with the swelling thereof, yet 
will not we fear." 

But Jesus is able and willing to protect others 
beside his own loyal people. There is no man in 
any Christian land but is sitting somewhat under 
the segis of Jesus Christ. The rim of that great 
shield turns aside some darts; and even the far-off 
shining of it in the ends of the earth, in the form 
of natural religion, scares away many a bat and 
hurtful night-bird. He is the official defender of 
mankind. He wards off* from everybody all the 
evils he consistently can: and since he can con- 
sistently do more for the righteous than for others, 
he invites all to be righteous, and take at his 
hands that full-orbed security for both worlds 
which belongs to his people. His Ark of safety, 
at least, is large enough to accommodate all man- 
kind. He says to all reprobates what he said to 
Jerusalem: "How often would I have gathered 
you together, as a hen gathereth her chickens 
under her wings, but ye would not!" Nothing 
but his own " would not" prevents any man to 
whom the great invitation has come from being 
hid in the secret of an impregnable pavilion 
till all dangers are overpast. In whatever peril 
he is, he is invited to seek the services of the 
great Intercessor and Advocate; and daily a great 



404 SUPREME THINGS. 

cloud of prayers that plead this name goes up for 
relief in all manner of straits, and always obtains 
it, in some form or other, through those mediato- 
rial hands. It matters not what the dangers are 
— whether to body, or mind, or estate, or reputa- 
tion, or any other interest — those honest prayers 
floating heavenward by the irresistible buoyancy 
of the '*for his sake we ask if which we have 
attached to them, are sure to reach their destina- 
tion and come back to us with some protection 
worth having. 

Behold the true sign of the cross ! Dangers 
and devils of all sorts are afraid of it We can 
conjure with it as never did magician with his 
spells. The Being to whom has been given all 
power in heaven and earth; who represented the 
Eternal Father in all the deliverances and salva- 
tions ascribed to God in the Old Testament; who 
during his human life interposed his buckler so 
often between men and every form of death and 
disaster, and is now Captain of salvation to all 
who enlist under him ; and in short, who is the 
image of the invisible God who is called a shield, 
a fortress, a city of refuge, a wall of fire, the 
watchman of Israel who never slumbers, the con- 
fidence of all the ends of the earth — this plainly 
is One outside of whose good offices as protector 
not a sinofle living: man need be. 



THE SUPREMIj; PERSON. 405 

''For he shall save his people from their 
sins/' When Satan desired to have the disciples 
that he might sift them as wheat, Jesus prayed 
for Peter that his faith might not fail. By the 
Lord's Prayer and various instructions which he 
gave his disciples, Jesus constantly sought to 
prevent or defeat temptation. But he did not 
confine his help to moral dangers. When Peter 
was sinking in his attempted walk on the sea, 
there was a preserving hand extended to him. 
When a boat freighted with twelve apostolic lives 
was foundering in the Sea of Galilee, a divine 
voice went forth to beat down the winds and 
weaves into a safe calm. When many others, all 
over the land, were looking into the graves to the 
brink of which disease had dragged them, they 
heard the w^ord or felt the touch which drew 
them back to healthy life. 

This double guardianship, against both natu- 
ral and moral evil, was not confined to the times 
when Jesus was found in fashion as a man on 
earth — when Peace ^ be still ! could smite the ele- 
ments wuth audible tones, and Pray that ye enter 
not into temptation could part the lips of a visible 
companion. He holds a glorious shield over all 
the ao^es. He who as Ano^el of the covenant 
blazed as a pillar of fire between the fugitive He- 
brews and their pursuers, now does without mira- 



4o6 SUPRKMK THINGS. 

cle what lie once did with miracle, and averts 
from liis people all natural evils which cannot be 
made to work for their good. By prayer we can 
secure from him all needed help in spiritual dan- 
gers. Thanks to the strength that Christ gives, 
great numbers are at this moment battling trium- 
phantly the weaves of temptation, looking unto 
Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. They in- 
clude all varieties of station, capacity, and char- 
acter. Under the twofold protection of Christ we 
see the tatters of the poor by the purple of the 
rich ; the footstool of the low by the throne of the 
high; the vacuum of the ignorant by the plenum 
of the learned; shall I not even add, the wicked- 
ness of the wicked by the righteousness of the 
righteous? For the providence in the hands of 
Christ fends off from all men all the evils it wisely 
can. Are we to believe that he who in the might 
of omnipotence sets himself to prevent as much 
sin as possible succeeds in preventing none? 
Are we to believe that he w^ho in the glory of 
his benevolence would fain exclude every sorrow 
from human hearts will fail, in the glory of his 
omnipotence, to exclude any ? 

Set it down, then, that to all classes as well 
as to all generations Christ stands to their endan- 
gered life in the relation of a protector. And we 
count it no small thing to say that his divine 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 407 

buckler circles about the widowed and the or- 
phaned who have no human defender; no small 
thing to say that he stoops and spreads the wing 
of heaven over the merest earth-worm that its fel- 
low-worms care not for; no small thing to say- 
that he whose name is above every name throws 
his protecting arms about the nameless children 
of the dust; no small thing to say that he who 
wears the diadem of Deity and hides in his hand 
all the treasures of all the worlds that shine afar, 
stands up to do battle against pain and sin for 
some poor Lazarus who has only crumbs for his 
food and dogs for his friends; no small thing to 
say that he who gathers within the bewildering 
orbit of his intellect not merely all the things of 
science, but the science of all things, takes inter- 
est enough in the narrowest and most unfurnished 
manhood to bring it within at least the outer 
court of his pavilion, with the privilege of enter- 
ing its Holy of holies. 

No human guardian is on the watch at all 
times. The vigilance of even fathers and mo- 
thers must have its seasons of rest. All human 
eyes will close in sleep; all human eyes will fail 
to penetrate the distance or the opacity which 
almost daily exigences wall interpose between 
them and the wards whom they have in charge. 
But the Watchman of Israel w^as never known to 



408 SUPREME THINGS. 

slumber. The man does not exist who can go so 
far or cover himself so profoundly as to be beyond 
the reach of that celestial eye or arm. Christ 
stands on the watch over men for ever. Not one 
lonely moment does he turn men off unsheltered 
amid the thickly flying dangers of life. And, I 
repeat, it is no small thing to say that, by the 
side of the base things of the world and the 
things that are not, may ever be found One who, 
day and night, summer and winter, through in- 
fancy and youth, through maturity and age, plies 
unceasingly infinite attributes in the work of a 
guardian. 

Yet unceasingly as the watchful labor goes on 
in our behalf, it never annoys us with a sense of 
vexatious constraint and surveillance. If a hu- 
man guardian should maintain about his charge 
such a constant pressure of supervision and de- 
fence, it would go far towards defeating its own 
end by hampering and harassing the person it 
sought to help. But Christ is unseen. He 
flashes his shield and sword about us without 
their sheen ever catching our eye. Though he 
is by our side as we sit in the house, walks with 
us as we go about our labor in field or shop, jour- 
neys with us by land or sea, no sound gives inti- 
mation of his mighty presence, no martial din 
w^earies our ears and nerves wnth the ceaseless 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 409 

Story of the protection we are receiving. The 
benefit we get comes to ns as gently and noise- 
lessly as do dawns and dews. 

Bless the good Shepherd! He both feeds his 
flock and fends it. When a member strays and 
is in danger of perishing, he goes after it on the 
mountains until he finds it. He goes against the 
wolf that Cometh to scatter the sheep. He is 
vigilant and active to keep them from harm of 
every kind; not one of them, but all of them; not 
at one time, but at all times. Even their night 
must have the security of a fold. Is not such a 
shepherd precious as life itself to the flocks whose 
pastures are but the margin of a waste howling 
wilderness, where beasts of prey roam, and into 
w^hich foolish feet are apt to stray ? 

Bless the Ark of safety ! the wide, unfounder- 
ing structure that has already housed so many and 
floated them safely through floods into heaven! 
that wide, hospitable structure that has room 
enough in it, not for one family only, but for all 
the families of the earth, and whose one great 
door stands invitingly open from age to age to 
humanity in all its depths as well as heights. 

in. Human Life as a Trial. 

We have seen our lives surrounded bv dan- 
gers. Much as Christ does to prevent these dan- 



4IO SUPREME THINGS. 

gers from issuing in actual disaster, no man is 
able to wholly avoid the experience of a vale of 
tears. Indeed, it is no part of the object of the 
ereat Guardian so to shield us from trials as to 
allow no opportunity for resignation to the divine 
wall, for manful summoning up of strength, or 
for a o:radual weanino: from the world which has 
become unfit to be the lasting home of good men. 
He has no wish so to help against trials as to 
leave no room to help under them and by means 
of them. So the weight that impends is some- 
times allowed to fall. The danger becomes the 
damage. The serpent that coils and hisses actu- 
ally strikes; the lion that roars and crouches at 
last springs on its victim. 

It were easy to make out a most distressing 
picture of the ills to which men are subject. I 
might tell of disappointments, bereavements, dis- 
eases, insanities, destitutions, slanders, accidents 
w^hich everywhere abound and to which all are 
liable, so tell of them that your ears would tin- 
gle. But I do not -care to do this. We all know 
how it is — to what a vast extent the earth has 
groaned and travailed together in pain until now\ 
Let us not exaggerate. Life is not all trial to 
any; it has many enjoyments for all; probably 
the enjoyments far exceed the sorrows in the case 
of most. But w^e have to allow that trial is a 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 41I 

very large element in all human experience, that 
sometimes it reaches enormous proportions, and 
that the great measures of afifliction which befall 
some naturally impend over all. No one is abso- 
lutely safe from anything. What man has suf- 
fered man may suffer again. It may come from 
a different direction, by different means, with cir- 
cumstantial differences of many sorts, but the 
trial is practically one in degree and kind. Clear 
days, cloudy days; days that are chill and windy 
as well as cloudy; days that are downright win- 
try and stormy as well as storm-betokening: such 
is the mixed experience of us all. None es- 
capes. We try hard by detour^s and dodges and 
various devices to save ourselves and families; 
but w^hile we are shutting one door the enemy is 
entering at another. We have to accept the situ- 
ation. Every latitude must have a stormy sea- 
son. All ages must know how to sigh and groan 
and weep. 

Trials are very impartial visitors — not at all 
aristocratic and select in the calls they make. 
The haughtiest have to be at home to them, and 
the humblest have to open their garrets and cel- 
lars when the commanding rap is heard. Trou- 
bles are quite as familiar with the inside of huts 
as of halls, will offer hand quite as readily to the 
begrimed slave as to his dainty and scented mas- 



41^ SUPREME THINGS. 

ter, have as little objection to domicile with the 
fool as with the philosopher, with the rascal as 
with the righteous. 

And sometimes they come often and stay long 
and make great drafts on the patience and resour- 
ces of their hosts. Life is made bitter as w^orm- 
wood. It seems not worth the living. *'The 
drop of sweet is dashed with bitter bowls." 
Sleep flies, the cheeks furrow, and the hairs 
whiten. The very drink is mingled with weep- 
ing. The sufferers cease to wonder at suicides; 
they have half a mind to be suicides themselves. 
Sometimes their mind is a whole one: they pre- 
fer the pangs and perils of dying to the miseries 
of living, and cut the thread of life with their 
own hands. 

In these circumstances there are three things 
which men need, viz., consolation under the 
trials, moral improvement by means of them, and 
their removal as soon as their moral use has been 
gained. Christ meets these needs as no others do 
or can. 

At that dark time when the disciples had just 
become fully aware of the separation about to 
take place between them and their Master they 
were filled with dismay and grief Christ saw 
their clouded faces and hearts and tried to con- 
sole them. ^'Ivct not your heart be troubled, 



THK SUPREME PERSON. 413 

neither let it be afraid." And he proceeded, in 
a touching strain of consolation and at considera- 
ble length, to reassure their hearts and strengthen 
them to cheerful endurance. When the bereave- 
ment actually came and the Master returned to 
the throne of heaven from the throne of his cross, 
he sent down additional consolation. The prom- 
ised Comforter came to remove the weight still 
more from their hearts and enable them to eo 
about their w^ork with elastic energy. Thus in 
their own persons they received the comforting 
which they had all along seen Christ bestowing 
on the people at large with unstinted freeness* 
For had they not been in the habit of seeing the 
sick and disabled cured, and so sympathizing 

friends lightened of their pains and apprehen- 
sions? Had they not seen dead men revived, 
and so the mourning homes of Nain and Caper- 
naum and Bethany made glad again ? Ever since 
they had known Jesus at all they had known him 
as the Consolation of Israel. So that from both 
experience and observation they were encour- 
aged to say, *^Now our Lord Jesus Christ him- 
self, and God, even our Father, w^ho hath loved 
us, and hath given us everlasting consolation, 
comfort your hearts." 

Such ^ was Christ then; but what is he now? 
Such was Christ to Israel; but what is he to all 



4^4 SUPREME THINGS. 

the ends of the earth ? A Consoler still, and be- 
yond all comparison the best of all the sons of 
consolation the world has ever seen. 

In the gospel Jesus assures us that through his 
grace trials need last but a little while ; they need 
be only a passing cloud. It may take an hour 
or a day or even a lifetime for that cloud to pass 
over, but pass over it shall for all who will allow 
the driving winds to get behind it. And then 
nothing but a clear sky for evermore. This is 
consoling. 

Further, in the gospel Jesus assures us that all 
our trials have a benevolent intent. They are 
sent for our good. They are really expressions of 
a fatherly tenderness. They mean an indispensa- 
ble moral discipline at the hand of One who, 
since he is Love, does not willingly afflict or 
grieve the children of men, but for their profit, 
that they may be partakers of his holiness. In- 
stead of aiming to destroy us, as do the arrows 
and the bullets that men shoot at us, they aim 
to save us — to save our characters, and so our- 
selves. The passing cloud instead of being 
freighted with lightnings is freighted with fruit- 
ful showers. And they are sure to fall as bless- 
ings and harvests unless we perversely resist. 
This too is consoling. 

And so is the example of Christ. For his own . 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 415 

life, like ours, was passed amid hardships and 
troubles and liabilities to trouble — troubles pa- 
tiently submitted to and bravely borne. O Man 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief, well dost 
thou deserve the name ! Assailed by poverty, 
ill-fame, hard usage from smiting tongues and 
smiting hands, earth frowning at him from below 
and heaven from above — ^Jesus was tried in all 
points as we are. Yet it was without sin. What 
an object lesson is this: Deity in the flesh uncom- 
plainingly enduring the same hardships with the 
meanest of us : a lesson of eloquent fellowship, of 
power to sympathize with us, of actual love for 
us, and of the way in which we should behave 
under trials. Have I been singled out from all 
the world to be a cross-bearer? No ; I not only 
have the whole world of mankind with me in my 
lot, but even God manifested in the flesh. It 
seems that even the divine Son himself does not 
claim exemption from trial, cannot wisely dis- 
pense with it even in his own case. May it not 
be that he cannot wisely dispense with it in ours? 
This, too, is reassuring and consoling. Just as 
the private soldier in the army of Cyrus was com- 
forted under the hardships of the campaign, when 
he found that his prince had fully as hard a pallet 
and as coarse a fare and as heavy a knapsack as 
himself, so it is fitted to silence our repinings 



4l6 SUPREME THINGS. 

under the crosses of our lot to know that these 
are even far less than the Master has patiently 
accepted for himself. 

'^Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep 
with them that weep.'' "To him that is af- 
flicted pity should be showed from his friend." 
And this is said because of the consoling nature 
of sympathy. Somehow it eases a burden to 
have some friendly heart pnt itself by the side of 
ours and pulse rhythmically with it. Whatever 
the philosophic explanation of this, the fact is 
beyond question and is as old as mankind, if not 
as old as the hills. A good sympathiser is worth 
his weight in gold in a sorrowful time — even 
though his name be John. But when his name 
is Jesus he is worth immensely more. For his 
sympathy is as infinite as his nature, is as much 
purer and larger and warmer than that of any 
mere man as his nature is more intelligent and 
loving and broad than ours. When I see him 
weeping at the grave of Lazarus, and even at that 
living grave, full of dead men's bones and all un- 
cleanness, that men called Jerusalem; when I read 
here and there how he had compassion on the 
ignorant and those out of the way, on the victims 
of disease, and on the neglected masses who were 
as sheep having no shepherd ; when, above all, I 
see that helpful life of his distributing itself as 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 417 

with a thousand hands for the relief of the mani- 
fold distresses that cast themselves up at his feet, 
as so many wrecks, as he paced the beach of our 
sorrowful sea — I feel that the way is prepared 
for those broad statements and mighty concep- 
tions of his character as a sympathizer to which 
his character as the image of the invisible God, 
who is love itself, compels us, and who^ even in 
Old Testament times, was said to be afflicted in 
all the affliction of his people, to be full of com- 
passion, to be very pitiful, even as a father pities 
his children. The most sympathetic nature that 
ever grasped with trembling hand the trembling 
hand of a stricken neighbor, and looked into tear- 
laden eyes with eyes as wet, is as ice and stone 
by the side of Jesus, who not only can be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, but is as divine 
in his sympathy as in his wisdom and power. It 
is more than the difference between the occasional 
raindrop that falls from a distant passing cloud, 
and the downpour when the very heavens them- 
selves seem to shut down upon us and then dis- 
solve at once. 

Another lamp is set in our .darkened house, 
another rift is made in our clouded sky, by the 
invitation which Jesus gives us to tell out our 
troubles in any degree of detail into his sympa- 
thetic ear. Multitudes have found great relief in 

buijieme Thiugs. 2'J 



4l8 SUPREME THINGS. 

accepting this invitation. We go and tell Jesus, 
and somehow our burden is lightened, though our 
John is buried. We begin to feel the everlasting 
arm under us. The ancient promise seems being 
fulfilled to us : '' Cast thy burden upon the Lord, 
and he shall sustain thee.'' All we who find it 
more or less of a relief to talk out our troubles 
circumstantially into the ears of some tender- 
hearted friend may find still greater relief by 
going into our closets and fully unbosoming our- 
selves to that great mediating Soul that ever lis- 
tens there. This door of comfort is open to every- 
body. Let everybody enter it and confess that 
the Comforter who was promised to abide for ever 
is still busy at his work. The nineteenth century 
as well as the first may walk in the comfort of 
the Holy Ghost who proceedeth from the Father 
and the Son. And when, closeted with our grief 
and Christ, some Scripture promise suddenly ap- 
pears in our memory, or some new reason for 
trusting in the wisdom and goodness of divine 
Providence flashes athwart our gloom, we may 
well venture to think that the supernatural has 
come to the help of the natural, that we have the 
fulfilment of a promise that has been standing 
for eighteen centuries, reinforcing a natural law 
that has been standing some six millenniums. 
We sometimes see o^lowine accounts of the 



THE supreme: person. 419 

power which philosophy has to comfort. That it 
can sometimes be of service to moderate affliction 
need not be questioned. But the help that phi- 
losophy, at its best, gives in affliction is very small 
compared with what may be obtained by a per- 
sonal application to Christ. ''Is any afflicted? 
let him pray.'' Acting on this direction afflicted 
men have often gone to Christ for strength and 
comfort, and have not gone in vain. The same 
hand that was stretched out to sinking Peter and 
helped him to walk amid his billows was put 
forth to sustain them amid theirs. The same 
voice whose Be of good cheer ; it is I ; be not 
afraid^ calmed the tempest within the storm-tossed 
apostles as well as the tempest without them, 
mysteriously calms many now when their night 
is grim with storms and spectres. When all God's 
waves and billows seem to go over them, they 
find that prayer can bring Jesus down to their 
help at the bottom of the sea. When their fur- 
nace is heated seven-fold, they are seen walking 
loose amid the fires in company with one whose 
form is that of the Son of God. They are dying, 
their last breath is going, and it says, ''Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit," for the black heavens 
have opened, and they have seen Jesus standing 
on the right hand of God. 

But Christ is a sanctifier of afflictions as well 



420 SUPREME THINGS. 

as a consoler of them. That men often get great 
moral benefits from trials is matter of observation; 
but it is not matter of observation that these bene- 
fits come ultimately from Christ. This is strictly 
a matter of revelation. The Bible tells us that all 
moral improvements are fruits of the Spirit; and 
then tells us that the Spirit is Christ's messenger 
and proxy. Christ sends him. What he does is 
done in Christ's name. So Jesus is sanctification 
as well as consolation, manifesting the God who 
does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of 
men, but for their profit, that they might be par- 
takers of his holiness. 

Christ is also a great remover of trials as well 
as sanctifier and consoler of them while they con- 
tinue. *'Then they cried unto the Lord in their 
trouble, and he delivered them out of their dis- 
tresses." This is the w^ay a large part of the Old 
Testament runs, also a large part of the New Tes- 
tament. *' Go and show John again those things 
which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their 
sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, 
and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up;" appa- 
rently no form of trial but could hope for removal 
on application to Jesus when he was visible on 
the earth. Becoming invisible, he did not be- 
come impotent. He still removes trials in count- 
less instances. The prayer goes up winged with 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 421 

the name of Jesus, and the blessing comes down 
through Jesus' hands. The sickness departs, 
the want is relieved, the slander is refuted, the 
clouded reputation clears up, the lost piece is 
found, the prodigal comes back. Not in all 
cases. Sometimes the thorn in the flesh cannot 
wisely be removed. But often it can and is. 
Men now, as of old, are compassed about with 
songs of deliverance. Has Jesus lost anything 
of his old power to remove trials now that all 
power in heaven and earth has been given him ? 
Has he lost anything of his old disposition, he 
who is the same yesterday and to-day and for 
ever? 

IV. Human Life as a Sin. 

Our race has even more experience of sin 
than it has of sorrow. The man who has most 
trials is not dealt w^ith according to his sins. 
They who sin the least have need to say, O I^ord, 
have mercy on us, miserable offenders! 

We will make no overstatements as to human 
sin. It is neither as great as it can be nor as 
great as it has been. As one looks about him in 
such a land as this, he sees much that is bright 
and conscientious, and not a little victorious con- 
tention aofainst sin of all kinds. But we must 
remember that the society we see is not society in 



422 suprem:^ things. 

a state of nature, but one that has long been sub- 
jected to the working of Christian forces. We 
must discount the effects of these forces in order 
to get what human life would be without the 
interference of Jesus Christ. But even as society 
is, with all its Christian shaping, it makes by no 
means a pleasant picture. There is no man that 
liveth and sinneth not. No living man would be 
extravagant if he should do as the publican did, 
who would not so much as lift up his eyes to 
heaven, but smote on his breast and cried, "God, 
be merciful to me a sinner." This is what all 
the great Christian Confessions with one voice 
summon us to do — is what the saintliest men 
have always done. 

As to what mankind at large have always 
been, consult history, which is little more than a 
record of wars and crimes on a large scale. You 
are compelled by the narrative to wade knee- 
deep, and sometimes neck-deep, through mur- 
ders, perjuries, cruelties, oppressions, and every 
form of political knavery. As to what mankind 
at large now are, consult the laws, legal doc- 
uments, penalties, courts, police, prisons, busi- 
ness precautions, by which society seeks to pro- 
tect itself against the passion, the greed, the 
ambition, the selfishness of men. They all agree 
that the world is in a bad way and will bear 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 423 

watching. Even a glance at society through the 
window of a single daily newspaper gives very 
grim suggestions. And what moral monsters can 
now and then be found! Nothing is too bad for 
some sinners to think and do. No crime we 
can conceive of but is daily being committed. 
No mire of blasphemy and foulness and mischief 
but is daily being wallowed in. Men rotten with 
vice, men who fear not God nor regard man, the 
dangerous classes, the atheists and socialists and 
nihilists, the gamblers, the swindlers, the blas- 
phemers, the Sabbath-breakers, the publishers 
and venders of vile books and prints, the drunk- 
ard-makers — in short, the men who are the terror 
and disgust of common sinners, how astonish- 
ingly they abound in even the best countries! 
One wonders at the majestic forbearance of the 
Almighty: the whole world smutted with sin, 
countless cesspools reeking to heaven, broad 
plague-spots whose foul airs are ever praying for 
the lightnings to come and purify them: how can 
the holy heavens stand it ! Why, even we, mis- 
erable specimens as we are of redeemed human- 
ity, whose very righteousnesses are as filthy rags, 
even we stop our nostrils and catch our breath 
and lift our hands in dismay and horror over the 
fetid slums that infest both city and country. It 
is a wonder that this noisome planet of ours has 



424 SUPREME THINGS. 

not long since been smitten back into its original 
nothingness, instead of quietly going its rounds 
from age to age amid the benedictions of sun- 
shine and rain and harvests. And we are amazed 
at this wonder, especially when w^e consider that 
the world within men is always worse than the 
world without. Society is always worse than it 
appears to us. Cloaks and veils are an indispen- 
sable part of the wardrobe of every bad man. 
Could we see the heart of humanity as it must 
appear to God, we should say as he does, ''The 
heart is deceitful above all things and desper- 
ately wricked." The Saxons really said the same 
thing when they used the word man to signify 
both a human being and wickedness. 

To this very sinful world Christ stands in the 
relation of atoner, forgiver, reformer, and Saviour. 
While visibly on the earth he was constantly act- 
ing in each of these characters. His every suf- 
fering was in satisfaction for sin. "Son, be of 
good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee," went 
forth from his lips with sovereign authority. He 
spent his life in going about to make men better, 
and numbers through his influence began a new 
moral life. Not content with the reformation of 
conversion, he proceeded to add to it the refor- 
mation of sanctification. Apostolic virtue grew 
under his example and instructions as well as by 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 425 

his prayer that God would sanctify them through 
the truth. 

Christ atoned for all sins, past, present, and 
to come. Is it a sin black and pestilent as the 
pit ? he made provision for its forgiveness. Is it 
the scarlet-red offence of the men who scoff at 
and hate his holy name and war malignantly on 
his cause? he failed not to include it in his 
mighty satisfaction. Yonder is a man so low in 
faculties and condition that common men would 
disdain to set him with the dogs of their flock; 
yet Jesus did not overlook the poor outcast when 
he paid our ransom, but gave as freely for him as 
for the prince and the sage. And surely it was 
not a costless thing, that all-embracing ransom! 
The King of heaven became the subject of men. 
Purity itself came to dw^ell wath the vile. The 
occupant of heaven's noblest palace took the 
estate of one who had not w^here to lay his head. 
It became his lot to hunger and thirst w^ho had 
opened his hand and supplied the wants of every 
living thing; his lot to endure reproach and con- 
tempt whose ear had been filled from everlasting 
with tides of heavenly praise and worship. To 
sweat blood in the garden and hang nailed to a 
cross while the united blasts of earth and hell and 
heaven beat on his shelterless head, was no bed 
of roses to one who had dwelt from eternity in 



426 SUPREME THINGS. 

the bosom of the Father. *' Is it nothing to you, 
all ye that pass by ? Behold and see if there be 
any sorrow like unto my sorrow.'' And that 
unequalled sorrow was a gratuity. That great 
fight of afflictions, that wonderful cup of trem- 
bling, we are welcome to take the benefit of 
without money and without price. Thy blood, 
O Saviour, on our lintels and door-posts makes j 
the destroying angel pass by. The bitterness of 
thy Calvary purchases for us the sweetness of our 
heaven. 

The world has had some reformers who did 
not deserve the name: they have been deformers. 
But it also has had not a few who have deserved 
and received the praise and reverence of mankind 
for the abuses which they have corrected. Such 
were the Ezras and Josiahs, such the Wyckliffes 
and Luthers. And such was Jesus Christ — by far 
the most thorough, com.prehensive, and successful 
of all reformers. His axe struck at the root of all 
evils. His shoe-latchet all other reformers are 
unfit to stoop down and loose. Without his work 
all other reforms are superficial and temporary: 
with it as a foundation the whole world can be 
rebuilt for God. Single out the worst character 
that can be met with: Christ has revolutionized 
as bad. Find out styles of wickedness as various 
as the country can furnish: Christ has, time and 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 427 

again, mastered as various iuto respectability and 
religion. As the author and finisher of faith, as 
the one exalted to give repentance, he claims as 
his own all the true virtue that has come to be 
found in the world. The reforms he makes on 
characters are the most real and radical known. 
In the act of regeneration by the Holy Ghost he 
takes up the old foundations of our moral being 
and lays down new ones. And it is characteristic 
of his reforms that they are abiding. When I have 
persuaded a drunkard to forsake his cups he may 
go back to them finally. But when Christ has 
once turned a man from darkness to light, and 
from the power of Satan to God, he remains turned 
for ever. And in time the permanent reform will 
become the perfect. Every sin will disappear, 
and the whole man will become as a corner-stone 
polished after the similitude of a palace. All 
over the world, at the same moment, Jesus is car- 
rying forward these radical, lasting, and supreme 
moral transformations, with wonderful patience, 
against the resistance of sin-loving and Satan- 
governed men. Do many remain unconverted? 
It is no fault of this chief of reformers. What he 
does for some he is willing to do for all. There 
would be a world-reform of the completest char- 
acter if all men would only open a wide door to 
the *' Holy Ghost, which is shed on us abundantly 



4^8 SUPREME THINGS. 



n 



through Jesus Christ," who ''shall save his peo- 
ple from their sins." 

The Jews considered it blasphemy for Christ 
to undertake to forgive sin. Blessed blasphemy ! 
We are able to rejoice and triumph in the fact 
that to pardon is the rightful office of him w^ho 
has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and 
in the further fact that he is freely exercising this 
office all round the world. Since his blood 
cleanses from all sin, he could forgive the peni- 
tent thief on the cross; and, for the same reason, 
he can forgive as bad men now. With him the 
question never respects the greatness of the sin, 
but the repentance of the sinner. The worst is 
welcome to absolution as soon as he turns. No 
penitent ever w^ent away from his confessional 
unabsolved. Not seven times, not seventy times 
seven, but times without number, does the merci- 
ful Saviour pardon the offences of his people. 
He puts away the sins of that multitude which no 
man can number that is slowly gathering in hea- 
ven. True, those sins are an ocean; but Christ 
knows how to turn such oceans into dry land. 
And it is not his fault if any part of the world 
remains submerged. He urges forgiveness and 
the preaching of forgiveness on all men without 
exception, presses these privileges on them as if 
he were the only person to be benefited by their 



THE SUPREME PERSON. 4^9 

accepting. One would think the Son of God to 
be the needy one, and not the son of man. 

*' Unto you that believe he is precious." Is 
there not great reason for this ? As an ignorance, 
as a danger, as a trial, and as a sin, human life is 
tinder unspeakable obligations to Jesus Christ. 
An incomparable teacher, guardian, consoler; the 
only atoner, forgiver, radical reformer, and ^'au- 
thor of eternal salvation unto all them that obey 
him" — where is the balance that can weigh his 
worth to us? Not that w^hich weighs planets 
and suns : not that constellated one which men 
call Libra and figure in gold on the evening skies: 
only that whose golden beam sways through all 
immensity, and in which imm^ortal souls are 
weighed — not to say the Eternal himself. '' Thou 
art fairer than the children of men ; grace is 
poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed 
thee for ever." Let us bless him too. He de- 
serves that earth should quake with his praise 
and quake for ever. This is what heaven does. 
*'Unto him that loved us and washed us from our 
sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings 
and priests unto God and his Father; to him be 
glory and dominion for ever and ever." We may 
think too much of a merely human friend; but 
we cannot think too much of that divine Friend 
on whose head are so many crowns of benediction; 



430 SUPREME THINGS. 

who does so much to instruct and comfort and 
improve our present life, and thus obtains eternal 
redemption for us. Oh, never can we think too 
much of Him who hath ascended on high ; who 
hath led captivity captive ; who hath received 
such gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, 
that the I^ord God might dwell among them! 



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